Chile’s Competition Tribunal Orders Visa & Mastercard To Alter Payment Practices

Chile´s competition authority, the Tribunal for the Defense of Free Competition (TDLC) has issued a sentence regarding the procedures that will regulate payments systems in Chile, notifying the relevant parties.

The TDLC’s sentence included instructions for payments systems, and is the first to regulate credit card companies. The aim of the measure was to explore the possibility of issuing general guidelines that would be a good fit for the state of competition in the credit, debit, and prepaid card payments market.

Chile´s payments market was monopolized under Transbank, an association of banks and card operators, until 2019. The association announced it would make changes to its business model. Among these changes are the closing of direct agreements with Visa and Mastercard, with Transbank creating some distance between itself and the country’s banking institutions.

Read More: Chile: MoF announces measures to end Transbank monopoly on payments

The changes have made smaller companies, including Multicaja’s Klap and Banco Santander’s Getnet, viable competitors in the payments processing market, with the entire payments system shifting to a four-stage payment model.

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