BRUSSELS, July 5 Reuters Visa and Mastercard will extend caps on tourist card fees agreed five years ago with EU antitrust regulators by another five years to 2029, the European Commission said on Friday.

Visa, the world39;s largest payments network operator, and its closest rival Mastercard, in 2019 agreed to a 0.2 fee cap on nonEU debit card payments carried out in shops and a 0.3 fee limit on credit card payments to settle an EU antitrust investigation and avoid hefty fines.

The fee caps are due to end in November this year. The move followed a longrunning investigation by the EU competition enforcer triggered by a 1997 complaint by business lobby EuroCommerce.

The Commission, which acts as the EU antitrust watchdog, said the two companies volunteered to continue the fee caps beyond 2024.

Interregional interchange fees for debit and credit card transactions under these schemes will remain capped for another 5 years until November 2029, it said in a statement.

For card present offline transactions, the fees will remain capped at 0.2 for debit cards and 0.3 for credit cards. For card not present online transactions, the caps will remain 1.15 for debit cards and 1.5 for credit cards, it said.

Visa said the extended fee caps provide market certainty on interregional interchange rates.

The Commitments agreed with the EC in 2019, and this new Undertaking, recognise that cross border, ecommerce transactions are fundamentally different to instore payments, the…