Payment processing provider Heartland Payment Systems filed a federal lawsuit against Mercury Payment Systems. The lawsuit charges Mercury with false advertising, unfair competition, intentional interference with contractual relations and intentional interference with prospective economic advantage.
“The deceptive pricing practice of falsely inflating pass-through interchange fees not only constitutes unfair and illegal competition, it also costs even the smallest of merchants hundreds, or sometimes even thousands of their hard-earned dollars each year without their awareness,” said Robert O. Carr, Chairman and CEO of Heartland. “Industry-wide, the cost of deceptive interchange practices runs into tens of millions of dollars, and has caused great harm to the reputation of the entire electronic payments industry.”
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The suit calls for a halt of Mercury’s “routine deceptive pricing practices to secure new retail customers and maintain their existing merchants.” The suit also requests compensation to Heartland “for each merchant and prospect Mercury has wrongfully taken from Heartland by deceptively falsifying pass-through interchange costs and other illegal methods.”
Additional information on this suit can be found at: www.merchantservicesdefense.com.
