Visa's (NYSE: V) share price has fallen on Friday after the Wall Street Journal reported that the company is being investigated by the US Justice Department.
According to WSJ, the investigation is regarding whether Visa is engaging in anticompetitive practices in the debit card market.
According to sources who spoke to the U.S. news company, the department's antitrust division has been gathering information and investigating whether Visa, the largest U.S. card network, has limited merchants' ability to route debit-card transactions over less expensive card networks to the WSJ.
The department's questions are focused on online debit card transactions, but investigators have asked about in-store transactions as well.
Shares of Visa are currently down 4.7% on Friday at $210.602.
The investigation emphasises the importance of so-called network fees, which are invisible to consumers but a burden on merchants, who frequently pass the costs on to customers through price increases.
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