Lenz & Staehelin represents Mastercard: ComCo lifts interim injunctions

In early 2021, ComCo opened an investigation into Mastercard for possible obstruction of SIX’s National Cash Scheme (NCS) and at the same time issued injunctions. Due to a complaint by Mastercard, the injunctions have not yet become final. In the meantime, circumstances have changed, so ComCo repeals its injunctions.

With the interim measures, ComCo created the possibility for banks to issue Mastercard debit cards during the ongoing investigation, which technically would have been able to process NCS transactions. For this purpose, the NCS system could have been applied to the cards together with the Mastercard system (so-called “co-badging”), but the NCS system could not have been actively used. It has now been demonstrated that card issuing banks do not use this option. Therefore, SIX has postponed the entry into the NCS market until the investigation has been completed. This removes the basis for precautionary regulation

Lenz & Staehelin represents Mastercard. The team is led by partner and head of competition Marcel Meinhardt (pictured) and includes associates Luzius Sidler and Till Haechler (all competition).