At the tail end of the Biden administration, the Department of Justice filed an antitrust case against Visa’s debit business based on a flawed understanding of the relevant markets. Continued pursuit of this case carries several negative consequences.
First, the DOJ’s reliance on a tired, flawed approach to defining markets in the modern economy may delay a necessary update to antitrust law. Complex markets evade easy demarcation. That’s true in the case of payment markets. If the DOJ performed a holistic analysis of the diverse set of stakeholders vying to facilitate transactions between consumers and merchants, it would quickly realize that government regulations—not Visa nor other market participants—are to blame for any alleged anti-competitive outcomes.