Mastercard loses UK appeal to exclude three million dead claimants from lawsuit

Mastercard has lost an appeal Tuesday against a ruling in a £10 billion collective suit, allowing the claims of around three million deceased customers to continue.

The payments processing company is facing a claim brought by consumer champion Walter Merricks on behalf of around 46 million adults in the UK. It was the first mass consumer suit to be approved in the UK in 2021.

In March, the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT), said the date for determining whether members of the class action suit are based in the UK should be when the case was filed in 2016.

This would mean the claims of roughly three million people who had died since could be continued by their estates.

On Tuesday, Mastercard’s appeal against that decision was dismissed by the Court of Appeal, which ruled that the CAT was entitled to take into account that three million people who had valid claims in 2016 would be excluded otherwise.

Judge Julian Flaux said the overall purpose of the collective proceedings were to “provide access to justice for individual claimants who would not otherwise be able to obtain legal redress”.

He added: “The effect of Mastercard’s case would be to thwart, at least to a significant extent, the overall purpose of the regime.”

A spokesperson for Mastercard said: “We will continue to fight it [the case] and are confident that, once the facts are presented in court, the case will be thrown out.”

Merricks’ lawyer Boris Bronfentrinker said: “Mr Merricks is pleased with today’s judgment and looks forward to now prevailing on the merits to secure the billions in damages owed by Mastercard to UK consumers.”

Mr Merricks alleges Mastercard charged excessive “interchange” fees – the fees retailers pay credit card companies when consumers use a card to shop - between May 1992 and June 2008 and that those fees were passed on to consumers as retailers raised prices.