신용카드네트워크 관련 경쟁법적 쟁점 및 사례 연구

Abstract

Credit card industry has been growing rapidly in Korea. Recently, the reasonableness of the level of merchant discount was hotly debated among merchants and credit card issuers. In particular, small and medium retailers have complaint that the current level of merchant discount applied to them is too high and discriminatory to the disfavor of them. On the other hand, the credit card industry has responded that it is the natural outcome of the credit card market operation. The government tries to develop policy measures to lower the merchant discount rates applied to small and medium sellers already in financial distress. Also, the National Assembly passed a bill which would compel credit card issuers (acquirers included) to apply a favorable merchant discount rate which is administratively decided to a scope of small scale sellers. The credit card market has a couple of unique characteristics from competition law and policy perspectives. It is a typical two-sided market and multi-homing by consumers is a common symptom in the credit market. Under the leading competition law regimes including the United States and EU, whether the collectively decided interchange fee violates relevant competition laws has been a main issue and continually disputed in competition law proceedings. Noticeably, the Reserve Bank of Australia, the central bank of Australia has directly regulated the level of interchange fees since early 2000's. To develop sound policy measures for the credit card market, full care should be given to those characteristics and competition law and policy experience in other competition law jurisdictions.