UPDATE: Visa says receives no official requests from Russian antitrust

(Adds details in two last paragraphs)

MOSCOW, Nov 24 (PRIME) -- International payment system Visa has not received any official requests from Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service regarding alleged discrimination of small local businesses through servicing charges, and the company does not charge companies for servicing, a Visa representative told PRIME on Thursday.

On Wednesday, small and medium-sized business lobby group Opora Rossii’s President Alexander Kalinin told the service’s Director Igor Artemyev that Visa and MasterCard charge a 1.5% commission for servicing large businesses and a 2.5% commission for servicing small businesses, which is discrimination. Artemyev said that the service may launch an antimonopoly case due to that.

“Visa has not received any official requests on the matter. First, we should point out that Visa does not charge any trade companies and card users for using the company’s processing network, while trade and servicing companies pay an acquiring fee to an acquirer bank,” Visa’s representative said.

The amount of an inter-bank fee defined by Visa is calculated to ensure a balance between participants of the system and to stimulate emission of cards and development of the acquiring network. “We cooperate with all the sides in order to develop e-commerce in favor of the Russian economy,” the representative added.

A representative of MasterCard also said that the company received no official requests from the antimonopoly service regarding the issue.

Artemyev told reporters that the service is waiting for Opora Rossii to submit a claim on the matter, and after that it will send requests for details to Visa and MasterCard. The service will base its further actions on responses from the payment systems, and if Visa has nothing to do with this discrimination, the antitrust will check the acquiring chain, including acquirer banks.

“We were very disappointed with the fact that the charge for small businesses was higher than charges for other businesses. This is discrimination, and we have a corresponding article in the antimonopoly law. But they may be innocent of that. We are not charging anyone with anything right now,” he said.

End