Walmart Sues Visa — More Suits to Come

On Tuesday, the world’s largest retailer filed suit with the federal court in western Arkansas seeking $5 billion from Visa. Walmart claims the credit card company charged excessive card swipe fees. There is no report on whether Walmart also filed against MasterCard, but it seems inevitable.

Several other big retailers, including Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT), also chose not to join in last year’s settlement. That would indicate that they will go after Visa and MasterCard separately, perhaps waiting until they see the results of Walmart’s suit.

The National Retail Federation (NRF) filed an appeal of the settlement in January, saying:

The settlement does nothing to reform the price-fixing payments system that has let credit card swipe fees skyrocket over the past decade and nothing to keep them from continuing to soar in the future. Instead of lowering fees, the card industry’s settlement proposes that merchants pass them along to consumers in the form of surcharges. That is absolutely the opposite of what retailers sought, and major retailers have soundly rejected surcharging.

The NRF wants to overturn the December settlement. Although it has not issued a statement yet, the group is almost certain to support Walmart’s suit and to encourage others.

Visa’s stock rose fractionally on Thursday to close at $215.77 but traded down more than 1% in the after-hours session at $213.55. The stock’s 52-week range is $161.27 to $235.50.