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Paypal is facing a new antitrust lawsuit as some groups accused it of imposing high transaction fees. The American fintech company was slapped with a class-action suit for alleged anticompetitive pricing rules that affect millions of customers.
It was revealed that PayPal was hit with a consumer antitrust lawsuit on Thursday, and at least two consumers filed this at federal courts in San Jose, California. They claimed that the company is creating agreements with online merchants that artificially maintain high transaction fees.
The Plaintiffs and Their Claims Against PayPal
According to Reuters, the potential class-action lawsuit alleged that PayPal's contracts restrict merchants from applying price incentives to maneuver customers to more cost-effective payment options. The complainants also pointed out that the company has the highest transaction fees among the available payment processors in the United States.
One of the plaintiff's lawyers, Steve Berman, said that this is the first-ever suit that accused PayPal of overstepping the country's competition regulations through its "anti-steering" rules. He explained that if customers were allowed to see the payment processor's pricing system, they would see the difference between using Venmo and PayPal for their transactions while also using its competitors.
"These draconian anti-steering rules are similar to rules Visa and MasterCard used to impose before they were sued by the Department of Justice in 2010," Berman said in a press release. "Visa and MasterCard rescinded their anti-steering rules to resolve the Justice Department's claims, and now we see PayPal doing precisely the same thing."
The case was filed at the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California and named Christian Sabol and Samanthia Russell v. PayPal Holdings. Steve Berman and Ben Harrington of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro and Brian Clark and Stephen Teti of Lockridge Grindal Nauen law firm are representing them.
PayPal's Response to the Lawsuit
The California-based company stated learning of the suit. It also said it is currently in the process of reviewing the complaints.
"PayPal continues to put our customers first in everything that we do, and we take this responsibility seriously," PayPal simply stated.
Photo by: Muhammad Asyfaul/Unsplash
