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MasterCard International Incorporated


Self Description

October 2004: "MasterCard International is a global payments company with one of the most recognized and respected brands in the world. We manage a full range of payment programs and services, including MasterCard® credit cards, MasterCard® debit cards, Maestro® online debit cards, Cirrus® ATM cash access, and related programs.

With approximately 25,000 MasterCard, Cirrus and Maestro members worldwide, MasterCard serves consumers and businesses, both large and small, in 210 countries and territories. MasterCard is a leader in quality and innovation, offering a wide range of payment solutions in the virtual and traditional worlds."

http://www.mastercardinternational.com/corporate/index.html
September 2002: "For the past 30 years, MasterCard has been responsible for many "firsts" and innovations in the payments industry.MasterCard has expanded globally to such an extent that no other payment card is accepted in more locations around the world than MasterCard. We also bring you the MasterCard/Cirrus ATM network, the world's largest....Today, there are more than 30 MasterCard offices around the world including India, Thailand, Chile, South Korea and Taiwan." http://www.mastercardintl.com/about/corp/

Third-Party Descriptions

October 2011: "When A.T.M. cards were first used at stores as point-of-sale debit cards, no interchange fees were charged. In many instances debit card networks like Shazam and Tyme actually paid stores to accept debit transactions. They did this so banks, which owned the networks, could reap the huge profits of eliminating checks. But Bank of America, Chase and their Visa/MasterCard partners wanted to have their burgers and eat them, too. They instituted the illegal practices challenged and eliminated in the Visa Check antitrust litigation. Later, the Dodd-Frank Act directed the Fed to continue the process of addressing high and anticompetitive debit interchange fees by examining whether the banks could justify those fees on the basis of the costs banks incurred in processing debit card transactions. After initially deciding that debit interchange fees should be lowered from 44 cents to 7 to 12 cents, the Fed, in yet another huge handout to big banks, revised the fee range to 21 to 24 cents."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/opinion/debit-card-fees-are-robbery.html

December 2010: "A group of Internet activists took credit for crashing the Visa.com Web site on Wednesday afternoon, hours after they launched a similar attack on MasterCard. The cyber attacks, by activists who call themselves Anonymous, are aimed at punishing companies that have acted to stop the flow of donations to WikiLeaks in recent days."

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/08/operation-payback-attacks-visa

January 2010: "Here’s one finding: Rewards-earning credit cards with the Visa and MasterCard logo often cost merchants more than plain-vanilla ones, which hints at the card companies’ laserlike focus on subsidizing rewards for the affluent customers who are still spending, even if they are paying their bills off each month and thus paying no interest."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/09/your-money/credit-and-debit-cards/09money.html

May 2010: "The Durbin amendment gives the Federal Reserve new authority to regulate and limit the fees that businesses pay to card companies,. It specifically addresses payments processed through the Visa and MasterCard networks. American Express and Discover cards are not covered by the bill."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/15/business/15credit.html

June 2008: "MasterCard Worldwide has agreed to pay $1.8 billion to its credit card rival, American Express, to settle claims related to a 2004 antitrust lawsuit."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/26/business/26credit.html

Relationships

RoleNameTypeLast Updated
Opponent (past or present) Lloyd Constantine Esq. Person Oct 7, 2011

Articles and Resources

34 Articles and Resources. Go to:  [Next 14]

Date Fairness.com Resource Read it at:
Jul 24, 2012 First they came for Wikileaks, then the New York Times

QUOTE: There are signs that the U.S. government wants to target mainstream journalists and media outlets for the same kind of investigation that WikiLeaks has been subjected to for publishing classified information, which makes it even more important to defend WikiLeaks’ status as a media entity.

 GigaOM
Oct 06, 2011 Charging for Debit Cards Is Robbery

QUOTE: When Bank of America told its customers recently that it would start charging them $5 a month to use debit cards, it argued that it was forced to make that change because of regulations that altered the economics of the cards....But the banks’ simplistic statements are merely an attempt to rationalize and obfuscate one of the largest illegal transfers of wealth from consumers to banks in American history.

 New York Times
Dec 08, 2010 ‘Operation Payback’ Attacks Fell Visa.com (The Lede)

QUOTE: A group of Internet activists took credit for crashing the Visa.com Web site on Wednesday afternoon, hours after they launched a similar attack on MasterCard. The cyber attacks, by activists who call themselves Anonymous, are aimed at punishing companies that have acted to stop the flow of donations to WikiLeaks in recent days. The group explained that its distributed denial of service attacks — in which they essentially flood Web sites site with traffic to slow them down or knock them offline — were part of a broader effort called Operation Payback, which began as a way of punishing companies that attempted to stop Internet file-sharing and movie downloads.

 New York Times
May 14, 2010 Debit Fee Cut Is a Rare Loss for Big Banks

QUOTE: Retailers have begged Congress for years, in vain, to limit the fees they must pay to banks when customers swipe credit or debit cards...That long record of futility ended in a landslide Thursday night. Sixty-four senators, including 17 Republicans, agreed to impose price controls on debit transactions over the furious objections of the beleaguered banking industry.

 New York Times
Jan 09, 2010 The Damage of Card Rewards (Your Money)

QUOTE: the 1 to 3 percent or more of every transaction that merchants pay to accept the cards is a significant cost, and the small local retailers that make neighborhoods vibrant often pay a higher percentage. Stores then build those fees into higher prices, so people who aren’t earning any rewards can end up subsidizing those who do.

 New York Times
Oct 05, 2009 Prepaid, but Not Prepared for Debit Card Fees (The Card Game)

QUOTE: For many people who do not have bank accounts, or cannot get a credit card, the appeal [of a prepaid debit card] is irresistible... But their convenience comes with a catch: fees, often hidden in the fine print.

 New York Times
Jun 30, 2008 U.S. Seeks Names of UBS Clients

QUOTE: Federal authorities, turning up the pressure on UBS, the Swiss banking giant, asked a federal court on Monday to force the bank to turn over the names of wealthy American clients suspected of evading taxes through secret offshore accounts.

 New York Times
Jun 25, 2008 MasterCard Pays $1.8 Billion to American Express

QUOTE: The settlement comes about seven months after Visa paid more than $2.1 billion to American Express to put similar claims behind as it as raced ahead with plans for an initial public offering in March. MasterCard, which went public two years ago, had been under pressure to resolve the suit since uncertainty surrounding the litigation was one of the few clouds hanging over the rapidly rising stock.

 New York Times
May 25, 2007 Minority Women Face Uphill Climb in Small Business

QUOTE: THERE'S A TROUBLING question facing women-of-color entrepreneurs, who are starting small businesses at a rate higher than the national average: What's holding them back?

 Smart Money
Mar 27, 2007 Credit Cards Offer Better Protections Than Debit Cards

QUOTE: consumers whose debit-card data gets lifted are subject to a different set of rules and regulations — ones that may well leave you unprotected.

 Smart Money
Dec 26, 2006 Ugly Credit Card Trends

QUOTE: From fee hikes to new technologies that encourage spending, credit-card companies will look to improve their bottom line at your expense. Here are five credit-card trends that could affect your wallet in 2007, and how to avoid getting burned.

 Smart Money
Jul 27, 2006 Choosing the right card to travel: Consumers can expect some pretty hefty charges for using credit cards overseas ... a little investigation beforehand is worthwhile.

QUOTE: For the credit card industry, fees linked to foreign-made purchases provide a nice line of revenue. MasterCard (Charts) and its competitor Visa charge bank issuers 1 percent for every purchase consumers make abroad...Banks jumped on the bandwagon, charging a fee of 1 to 2 percent of their own on top of the fees passed down by Visa and MasterCard.

 CNN/Money Magazine
Jul 12, 2006 Well Spent: Read the fine print before using credit card abroad

QUOTE: Most large issuing banks are now charging this new fee. The "international transaction charge" is usually a separate fee slapped on top of any kind of currency-conversion charge a bank might also levy for expenditures abroad...The fees started popping up mostly on Visa cards about a year and a half ago. Now, almost all Visa and MasterCard issuers, which are individual banks, include the charges.

 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Jul 01, 2006 Suits Challenge Credit Bureaus

QUOTE: In a case with potentially far-reaching significance for mortgage applicants nationwide, a South Carolina consumer has filed class-action lawsuits against the three national credit bureaus, charging that they allow a practice that lowers the credit scores of millions of people.

 Washington Post
Jul 01, 2006 Suit calls unreported credit limits unfair

QUOTE: In a case with potentially far-reaching significance for home mortgage applicants across the country, a South Carolina consumer has filed class-actions against the three national credit bureaus, charging that they allow a practice that lowers millions of individuals' credit scores.

 Washington Post
May 26, 2006 Financial firms attack child porn

QUOTE: The nation's leading banks and credit card companies will soon team with law enforcement in a groundbreaking coalition to catch people who sell child pornography online...The companies will block transactions for online child porn or, if law enforcement opens an investigation, help track sellers and buyers.

 USA TODAY
Apr 19, 2006 Accidental death insurance: common as credit cards

QUOTE: Each of the four major credit card brands -- American Express, Discover, MasterCard and Visa -- offers some form of what the insurance industry calls "accidental death and dismemberment," or AD&D, coverage on some or all of their consumer credit cards.

 Bankrate.com
Mar 16, 2006 A siege on the child-porn market: Titans of finance join forces to try to thwart online trafficking in illicit images.

QUOTE: For the first time, titans such as American Express, Bank of America, and Citigroup will join forces to try to thwart the use of credit cards and other financial tools to buy child pornography.

 Christian Science Monitor
Jul 26, 2005 Main Street in the Cross Hairs

QUOTE: In the wireless hacker equivalent of a drive-by shooting wave, criminals obtained the cardholder information of tens of thousands of customers at four major stores... Recent investigations reveal that the thieves singled out stores with strong wireless signals and weakly protected data.

 New York Times
Jul 20, 2005 The growing problem of ID theft

QUOTE: In a 2004 report, the Federal Trade Commission estimates that 9.9 million Americans, or 4.6 percent of the population, had their identity hijacked in 2002 alone. More than half of those, 5.2 million, came through credit card accounts...

 Bankrate.com

34 Articles and Resources. Go to:  [Next 14]