WASHINGTON - What industry has faced a huge number antitrust lawsuits and federal investigations in the past 10 years? The credit card industry, wrote Mallory Duncan, chairman of the Merchants Payments Coalition (MPC) and general counsel of the National Retail Federation, in a Roll Call op-ed piece.

Both MasterCard and Visa "have settled lawsuits out of court for billions of dollars, settled with the Justice Department over their mistreatment of merchants and have even been sued by American Express and Discover over antitrust violations," Duncan pointed out.

"There??s a reason for this litany and, behind all these complex lawsuits and investigations, it??s really quite a simple one: The business is basically two companies, each separately using the collective market power of all their banks to fix fees the banks charge and the rules for credit and debit card transactions. That has been a formula for mischief across the globe."

The two largest credit card companies are part of a "broken, dysfunctional market," that without competition allows fees to increase all the time, "despite advances in technology and increasing economies of scale. American merchants pay the highest swipe fees in the industrialized world and have done so for years. In the United States, card fees are merchants?? second-largest operating cost after labor."

That translates into consumers paying higher prices. "Through these fees, banks make more on selling gas, for instance, than most gas stations."

Duncan concluded that, "in the United States, more than a decade of lawsuits, investigations and federal legislation has not created a card market that is free and fair. The U.S. has moved slowly compared with other industrialized countries in trying to make this a competitive market, but at least there has been some movement. Now, it??s time for more reform so we get out of the no-win situation the credit card industry has put us in."