Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled that credit card provider American Express’ long-standing policy of including anti-“steering” clauses in its contracts with merchants was not anti-competitive.
Steering is the practice whereby merchants discourage customers from paying with comparably high-cost cards like Amex and to use Visa or Mastercard instead. Importantly, anti-steering agreements do not limit merchants’ ability to favor debit cards or cash in their dealings with customers. The majority opinion, drafted by Justice Clarence Thomas, argues that there was no evidence of consumer harm in the form of higher prices or reduced output as a result of Amex’ anti-steering requirements.
The Court notes that the credit-card market is a market for transaction services and is two-sided, involving two distinct and interdependent sets of customers: merchants (who sell goods and pay fees to credit-card providers) and buyers (who use credit cards to pay for merchants’ goods).
Two-sided markets require a somewhat more sophisticated analysis in antitrust cases because of the interdependence of each side. For example, in a one-sided market, increasing merchant fees might be regarded as evidence of an abuse of monopoly power. In a two-sided market, such a fee increase can in fact be pro-competitive if it leads credit-card providers to offer better service to the other side of the market (buyers) thus increasing their purchases from merchants.
The peculiarities of two-sided markets have been noted by a long line of economists, including the 2014 Nobel Prize laureate Jean Tirole. His analysis, among others, was cited by Justice Thomas in his opinion.
Indeed, the evidence suggests that competition in the credit-card market is thriving. Take-up of cards has boomed since the 1970s. There is an endless variety of offerings among the various providers, with different (or no) annual charges, a diverse menu of rewards programs, and of course a range of interest rates on outstanding balances. In March, Amex in fact announced that it would cut its merchant fees to better compete with lower-cost providers. Since 2004, Amex fees have dropped by 10 percent.
However, even allowing that anti-steering agreements are not anti-competitive, could it be true nonetheless that anti-steering agreements hurt particular groups of consumers? Brookings’ Aaron Klein thinks so. In a piece published in the wake of yesterday’s ruling, he argues that “[the U.S.] payment system […] rewards the wealthy while penalizing the poor” and “functions as a hidden method of increasing income inequality.”