The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has confirmed that it is investigating PayPal, Mastercard and Visa over suspected anti-competitive conduct linked to the funding and usage of PayPal’s digital wallet.

The FCA does not generally issue public statements about investigations before publishing a statement of objections, in which it sets out a provisional view that the law has been broken. In this case, the regulator said its statement serves to confirm information disclosed by PayPal itself in its US quarterly financial reporting. Based on that disclosure, the investigations began in March of this year.

The FCA stressed that it has not reached any conclusions or yet made any findings with regard to the breach of competition law.

All three companies are being investigated under Chapter I of the Competition Act 1998, which pertains to collusion between companies to restrict competition in the UK. Visa and Mastercard are additionally being investigated under Chapter II, which regards abuse of a dominant position in a market.

In a statement, a Visa spokesperson told FStech: “The UK FCA has informed Visa that it has opened an inquiry into certain contractual provisions regarding the PayPal digital wallet. Visa is cooperating with the FCA in its inquiry."

In a sperate statement, a Mastercard spokesperson said: “We can confirm that we’ve received an information notice from the FCA requesting details of our contractual relationship with PayPal. Mastercard works to ensure we meet the highest standards of competition law and will be cooperating fully and transparently with the FCA.”

Responding to request for comment, a PayPal spokesperson said: “PayPal is cooperating with the FCA. As this is a pending investigation, we cannot comment further at this time."

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