> this just looks like a shakedown of an American company.

Mastercard being American has nothing to do with it. UK banks have had to repay literally billions of pounds for similar things. See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment_protection_insurance https://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/sep/27/landmark-rulin...

Depends on how you try and reason about this; The fact that there was no clear definition doesn't mean it wasn't excessive beforehand, just that the definition wasn't clear.

To the extent that this doesn't request damages beyond the fees collected, you could interpret this as a decade-long interest free loan to Mastercard. Obviously that's a bit of a facetious interpretation, but the fact that something wasn't spelled out as illegal doesn't mean it wasn't wrong.

Of course business prefer to get away with as much as they can, but there's no reason we have to accept this as the way things should be.

"Get away with"? We're talking about market pricing decisions. There's no morality involved. Is every business in the EU supposed to be worried about violating some undefined threshold of "excessive profit"?

Only the companies invested in low-competition markets with monoplistic tendencies need to worry. This is framed as an anti trust case, which means that the abuse of privelidged market position is the issue - not the company's profit in and of itself as you suggest.

> Is every business in the EU supposed to be worried about violating some undefined threshold of "excessive profit"?

Every business in the world should be worried about making "excessive profit" if that profit comes from a duopoly or a monopoly.

"Market pricing decisions" are not exempt from moral judgements.

See: recent medical pricing scandals in the US; Martin Shkreli/Daraprim, Mylan/Epi-Pen

Mastercard isn't really in the same bucket, but we do have anti-monopoly/anti-trust measures which aren't particularly well defined and seem pretty applicable here.

What's funny is that there's a generic alternative to Epi-Pens called Adrenaclick that works just as well, but that the politicians at the FDA and other agencies have put roadblocks in front of. I have no problem with Mylan raising their prices. If they were the only option, then I think the government would have a case for exercising control on price. But this is just politicians screwing up and trying to blame Mylan.

MasterCard or Visa aren't a monopoly/duopoly. At most, there's some inertia getting people to switch. The banks had the same problem getting people to use them in the first place, and it's a solvable problem if Visa decided to abuse its power.

They aren't comparable at all to the old railroad, steel, and oil companies. Credit cards are an extension of the idea of a promissory note - a piece of paper with "I agree to pay you $X" written on it. It's way more practical for businesses to not use them to process payments than it is to quit using oil, or to quit using the railroads.

Absolutely incorrect. If it was that easy, things would've changed long back and you would've named more companies than MasterCard / Visa. One simple logical case in point - MasterCard and Visa have such a strong investment in their infrastructure, there are multiple levels of redundancies built in to such a degree that you never hear Mastercard or Visa networks going down. Try doing that for any other firm. Why, just this morning, there was another thread on HN about a game developer suing a service provider for not keeping their systems online. What this enormous investment in infrastructure offers is 'trust'. Trust to financial institutions, merchants and customers. See Dwolla and Rupay as examples of alternative interchanges (Dwolla isn't one, but is trying to disrupt ACH and is similar in spirit). See if they can scale and promise that to the whole world payment traffic. Lastly, talk to anyone entrenched in business about payments and they'll refer to MasterCard and Visa as 'rails'. That's for a reason.

What about all the new mobile payment services? Apple Pay, Android Pay, Samsung Pay, the Walmart one?

I don't use any of them - I have a prepaid cell phone that lays on my desk 100% of the time, and is for emergency purposes only - but even if they were backed by Visa or MasterCard, it seems like they could be backed by a checking account just as easily.

Visa or MasterCard have value from inertia(all the work they did getting everybody to sign up for their cards), from their relationships with the banks(the banks tried and failed to do the same thing), from their ability to process payments worldwide, and from their infrastructure.

It's not clear to me what prevents Google from taking over if Visa started abusing its power. They have the inertia(everyone has a cell phone, though not the habit of paying with it), they have the infrastructure, I think cell phones work internationally, and they're big enough to develop a relationship with any bank.

To be clear, Visa and MasterCard are going to be extremely difficult to replace in the 'plastic payment cards' business no matter what they do. But not the more general 'electronic payment methods tied to bank services' business.

At least the first two on your list still use Visa or MasterCard under the hood, and still use the same infrastructure as paying with your generic NFC payment card -- and while I'm sure there are other companies providing such services, in practice I don't think I've seen an NFC payment card that wasn't Visa.

The issue here isn't so much getting the kit into the hands of the consumers, as into the hands of the retailers: if they can't use the infrastructure they already have, you'll have real difficulty getting any traction. See Also: Powa, which for all its other failings still had the over-arching failing that they were trying to facilitate two-sided transactions without having anyone on either side.

You say inertia, I say network effects. The fact that network effects arise naturally doesn't mean we should be ok with those barriers to competition.

The fact that Apple/Google/Samsung have failed to make a serious dent should be a good indication that there are real barriers to entry.

They are defined in the anti-competition laws. The fees charged were anti competitive.

I could just as easily make an argument that the American company was shaking down European consumers for 16 years and accumulated an unfair windfall.

Also, when dealing with entities of this size, laws really take a backseat. The effectiveness of any law is directly proportional to the economic damage you can inflict on the opponent.

Isn't this what happened with Apple in Ireland? They only decided now that it's wrong, yet they want apple to pay back for the last 20 or so years? Even though back then it wasn't seen so much as a problem.

Well no, in that case they decided that Ireland violated the treaties it previously signed.

I can't compare to this case but that was only retroactive in that they discovered the problem later.

Just like the Cement price fixing cartel was only found and prosecuted only after it had been running for years.

which is even more confusing, as the govt is being rewarded for violating treaties by being paid back all the tax. Was the govt not more in the wrong than Apple was? (sorry, thread hijack)

It's not a reward for the government, hence why they have lodged an appeal. Ireland has a lot more to lose by accepting that tax money than they would gain.

And presumably all the other states will want a share of those profits transferred to Ireland to avoid tax.