Benzinga | Oct 28, 2021 06:21AM EDT

Visa's Relations With Square, PayPal Trigger DOJ Scrutiny: WSJ

* The Justice Department is watching Visa Inc's (NYSE:V) financial incentives offered to Square Inc (NYSE:SQ), Stripe Inc, and PayPal Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:PYPL) as part of its antitrust investigation, the Wall Street Journal reports.

* The investigators are probing if Visa's deals prevented the payments firms from using other card networks or money-movement technologies.

* Fintech firms pay fees that Visa determines to send transactions over Visa's rails. Some fintech companies enable payments that bypass Visa and other major card networks. Interestingly, Visa has offered lower fees or other rewards to encourage fintech firms to send more transactions over Visa rails rather than other networks or technologies.

* Investigators were probing into an instance when Visa offered incentives that convinced PayPal to encourage people to make payments via Visa-branded cards. Separately, investigators are looking into a deal Visa struck related to Square's Cash App, which lets people remit money digitally.

* Square was working with networks including Visa and lesser-known companies to route these transactions. Visa acquired a stake in Square when it was a small startup. Visa offered lower fees for Square to send performance payments to the company leading to Square using Visa for many of its Cash App transactions.

* The DOJ is also probing whether Visa unfairly limited merchants from routing debit-card transactions over other rails.

* Price Action: V shares closed lower by 6.92% at $215.78 on Wednesday.