payments
Bulletins

The Justice Department is looking at Visa's deals with fintechs

Incentives Visa gave to PayPal, Square and Stripe are under scrutiny.

Visa's Foster City offices

Visa's relationships with fintechs are under scrutiny

Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The Department of Justice is examining Visa's interactions with fintech companies PayPal, Square and Stripe in an antitrust probe, according to the WSJ.

Antitrust investigators are looking at the incentives Visa gave to the fintech companies and whether they caused them to send transactions over Visa's payment rails instead of other networks.

The DOJ is looking at whether Visa's incentives resulted in PayPal encouraging consumers to use Visa cards, the WSJ said.

Visa is the largest card-based payment network in the U.S. But smaller competitors have been growing, from "buy now, pay later" providers such as Klarna and Affirm to PayPal and Square's own network.

Tomio Geron

Tomio Geron ( @tomiogeron) is a San Francisco-based reporter covering fintech. He was previously a reporter and editor at The Wall Street Journal, covering venture capital and startups. He was also as a staff writer at Forbes covering social media and venture capital, and edited the Midas List of top tech investors. He can be reached at tgeron@protocol.com or tgeron@protonmail.com.

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