Here's an excerpt from today's article in American Banker by Maria Aspen.  She speaks with Lloyd Constantine, about his new book, Priceless: The Case that Brought Down the Visa/MasterCard Bank Cartel.  



A polarizing figure from past battles between merchants and payments companies has returned to the interchange debate with harsh words — for both sides.



Lloyd Constantine, who maneuvered the card industry into paying the largest antitrust class-action settlement in history, has resurfaced six years later with a book about the case and some surprising criticism about other lawsuits that he sees as riding his coattails.



For example, don't look for his unequivocal support of a long-running merchants' suit alleging that interchange constitutes antitrust violations and price fixing.



"I'm not commenting on the ultimate merits of the cases, but they seem to be lawyer-driven cases. Our case was not a lawyer-driven case," Constantine, the lead attorney for Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and other merchants in the class action settled in 2003, said in an interview last week.



"They seem to be cases that had looked at our case and said, 'Look at those guys. Wow, they got rich.' I saw the process, I saw them running around the country, signing up clients — that's something that I've never done."



Constantine acknowledged the irony of such comments, having long been a target for similar accusations from payments industry members, especially after his suit was settled for $3 billion. (That included about $225 million in attorneys' fees.) The settlement, which also mandated the untying of debit card from credit card acceptance and a reduction in the interchange rates for signature-based debit, preceded a second round of lawsuits filed against Visa Inc., MasterCard Inc. and their bank customers.



His comments, and the book, "Priceless: The Case that Brought Down the Visa/MasterCard Bank Cartel," come as interchange has become an increasingly high-profile and mainstream issue, with advertising campaigns from merchants and networks alike, the public riled about the credit card industry in general and regulators and lawmakers looking into interchange.

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