The National ATM Council and assorted independent ATM operatorshave filed an antitrust suit against the two dominant card brands,Visa and MasterCard.

The suit alleges that Visa and MasterCard have unlawfullyrestrained trade by setting ATM fees that must be the same acrossany and all ATM networks.

The deployers argued this was partly a holdover from the dayswhen the two brands were associations of financial institutions andwhen there were few, if any, ATM deployers which were not financialinstitutions.

Preventing independent ATM deployers from setting network feesboth prevents them from maximizing profit in some circumstances andfrom offering less expensive ATM services in othercircumstances.

“In a reasonably competitive market, ATM operators would setaccess fees at a level reflecting the cost of obtaining the networkservices and other inputs necessary to complete the transaction,”the deployers wrote in their complaint.

“ATM operators would set access fees lower for transactionsrouted through lower cost ATM networks relative to access fees fortransactions routed through higher-cost networks,” the suitsaid.

“However, the ATM restraints fix and maintain access fees at thesame level irrespective of which network complete the transactionor what those services actually cost,” the deployers added in theircomplaint.

The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.,and no judge has been assigned.

The National ATM Council was recently formed as a merger of two existing organizations and has said it isopen to working with credit unions.