My opinion on the DOJ lawsuit against VISA

The DOJ Visa $V (-0,03 %) lawsuit is absolutely laughable.

Visa is clearly not a monopoly, Mastercard $MA (+0,06 %) is also still there. If you want, you can add American Express $AXP (-1,07 %) can also be included. To apply double standards here is simply extremely unprofessional.

The DOJ is particularly bothered by the "client incentives" and debit cards. The "client incentives" are simply marketing expenses to Visa customers. These do not even serve to exclude others, everywhere you can pay with Visa, Amex, Mastercard and PayPal are also accepted.

The focus here is only on debit cards and not credit cards, in order to develop a narrative that Visa is harming the "poor" here.

In addition, Visa's fees are allegedly partly to blame for inflation. Anyone who has ever looked at quarterly reports from Visa or Mastercard knows that this is absolute bs.

On the one hand, the DOJ claims that Visa charges too high a fee, forcing merchants to permanently raise their prices. On the other hand, it bothers the DOJ that these merchants receive money from Visa.

The fact that merchants choose Visa (also Mastercard and Amex) because the transaction network is extremely secure and a basis of trust is ignored.

The DOJ, which is so concerned about consumers, also doesn't seem to realize that none of these consumers need to use Visa's network in any way. They also ignore the fact that paying with cash also incurs costs (article in the comments).

I really hope the DOJ doesn't start looking for scapegoats for inflation now.

If that is the case, it looks very politically motivated to blame others afterwards, as always, but not those who make the political decisions that were/are a driver of inflation.