Visa Inc. stock fell 1.6% in after-hours trading Monday following reports that the payments giant faces an antitrust lawsuit from the U.S. Justice Department.
Bloomberg News first reported late Monday that the Justice Department plans to accuse Visa of monopolizing the U.S. debit-card business, with an official filing coming as soon as Tuesday.
Visa (V) declined to comment late Monday. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Citing sources familiar with the matter, Bloomberg said the government will claim Visa illegally hindered competition from rival companies through exclusive agreements, among other things. The New York Times added that the Justice Department will argue Visa penalized its customers when they attempted to use other payment-processing services.
The Biden administration has taken a hard line on anticompetitive behavior by big companies, and filed antitrust lawsuits in recent months against companies such as Ticketmaster parent Live Nation Entertainment (LYV), Alphabet Inc.'s (GOOG) (GOOGL) Google, Amazon.com (AMZN), Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. (META), and moved to block mergers such as Kroger and Albertsons (KR) (ACI) and JetBlue and Spirit Airlines (JBLU) (SAVE).
Visa shares are up about 11% year to date, compared with the S&P 500's SPX 20% gain this year.
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