Apple Accused of Running Payment Cartel With Visa, Mastercard

A wine merchant is accusing Apple Inc. of conspiring with Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc. not to develop its own competing payment system in exchange for a cut of credit card transaction fees.

Plaintiff Mirage Wine and Spirits, an Illinois business that accepts Apple Pay as a payment method, says it paid higher merchant fees on customers’ payments as a result of the alleged conspiracy to throttle competition, according to a Thursday proposed class action filed in US District Court for the Southern District of Illinois. Apple Pay allows people to link their existing credit cards to their Apple accounts ...