Competition Appeal Tribunal finds that over 100 companies have not opted-in to collective proceedings

02/03/26

In August 2024, the CAT certified opt-in and opt-out collective proceedings against Mastercard, alleging that multilateral interchange fees payable on transactions using commercial payment cards are a restriction of competition and claiming damages.  Certification of the proceedings had initially been refused (see here) and was only permitted after the Class Representative significantly narrowed its claim. 

The opt-in proceedings are brought on behalf of merchants belonging to undertakings with annual turnover of more than £100 million.

Any merchant that wished to opt in to the proceedings was required to do so within 6 months, by 9 February 2025.  Following that deadline passing, the Class Representative initially failed to produce a register of the entities that had opted in, and ultimately did so only pursuant to an order of the Tribunal.

The register produced by the Class Representative did not identify individual corporate entities and instead comprised various businesses or corporate groups that were said to have opted in, and maintained that opting in by businesses or ‘undertakings’ was sufficient for the collective proceedings regime.  The Class Representative later produced successive versions of the register identifying individual corporate entities, which were said to have opted in by the February deadline.

Mastercard applied for the Tribunal to find that opting in must be effected by individual entities that could themselves bring proceedings.  It invited the Tribunal to find that over 100 of the entities said by the Class Representative to have opted in had not done so, in view of the documents actually submitted during the opt-in process.  The Class Representative maintained that they had opted in but also applied, in the alternative, for permission for those entities to opt in late.

The Tribunal today gave judgment.  It agreed with Mastercard that “only a natural or legal person can opt in to collective proceedings” and that undertakings could not do so.  The Tribunal also accepted Mastercard’s analysis of the documents and found that the c.100 legal entities included in later versions of the register had not opted in.  It also rejected the Class Representative’s application to allow those entities to opt in late.

The judgment can be read here.