Preliminary and incomplete The credit card industry in Israel David Gilo* and Yossi Spiegel** September 2005 Abstract: Since 1998, the Israeli credit card industry was transformed from a duopoly with two credit card companies which offer proprietary cards to a triopoly with two large open systems, Visa and Mastercard, which are issued and acquired by each of the three credit card companies. Regulatory intervention by the Israeli Antitrust Authority (IAA) played a key role in bringing about this structural change. In this paper we first review the Israeli credit card industry and then discuss in detail the regulatory intervention by the IAA. * The Buchmann Faculty of Law, Tel-Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv, 69978, Israel, email:
[email protected]. ** Faculty of Management, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv, 69978, Israel. Email:
[email protected], http://www.tau.ac.il/~spiegel Both authors were economic experts for Supersol (the largest supermarket chain in Israel) in the Israeli credit card case. 1 1. A brief history of the credit card industry in Israel Until 1998, there were two main players in the Israeli credit cards industry: Isracard, which was established in 1975 and is 100% owned by the largest bank in Israel, Bank Hapoalim, and CAL which was established in 1978 and was jointly owned at the time by the second largest bank in Israel, Bank Leumi (65%), and the third largest bank, Israel Discount Bank (35%). Isracard issued its own brand of credit card, called Isracard, for domestic use in Israel, and Mastercard and American express card for use in Israel and abroad, while CAL issued both Visa cards, under the brand name Visa CAL, and Diners Club cards.