Visa Inc and Mastercard have offered to reduce the fees merchants pay when accepting card payments from tourists in an attempt to settle a long-running EU antitrust investigation and stave off possible hefty fines, people familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

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Even after the reduction, such fees which are paid by merchants when they accept card payments and are a lucrative source of revenue for banks, will still likely be higher than those for EU cards, they say.

The European Commission has battled for more than a decade to reduce such costs and encourage cross-border trade and online commerce. Regulators across the Atlantic have also frowned on such practices.

Visa, the world`s largest payments network operator found itself in the Commission`s crosshairs in August 2017, charged with subjecting the cards of foreign tourists to excessive fees when they used in the EU.

The EU competition enforcer`s charge againt Mastercard dated from July 2015.

The Commission and Visa declined to comment. Mastercard said: "At this time, we have no information to share on our ongoing engagement with the European Commission."

(This article has not been edited by Zeebiz editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)