Dive Brief:

• Visa and the Department of Justice can have an additional three months to complete discovery in the government’s debit card lawsuit against the card network, a federal magistrate judge ruled Friday. Magistrate Judge Sarah Cave moved an October deadline to Jan. 29, 2027, and ordered parties in the case, including private litigants, to produce all requested documents by Sept. 30.
• Cave, who sits in the Southern District of New York, also urged the lawyers to ask U.S. District Judge John Koeltl to give her the authority to hold periodic status meetings to address any conflicts and keep the antitrust case proceeding. No trial date has been set in the case, although it appears likely to take place in 2028, based on the revised case schedule, without a settlement.
• Visa has turned over more than 6 million documents as part of some 200 document requests in the litigation, an attorney for the card network, Margaret Rogers, told Cave Friday during a hearing on whether the parties should be granted an amended schedule. Visa expected to complete document reviews and produce all documents by the end of next month, said Rogers, a partner with the law firm Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer.

Dive Insight:

In its antitrust lawsuit, filed in September 2024, the government argues that the company has carved out an illegal monopoly in the debit card market. Visa has denied those allegations.

The hearing Friday on a conference call came after Visa earlier this month told Koeltl, who is overseeing the antitrust case, that the parties would need additional time beyond an Oct. 16 deadline to complete the fact discovery portion of the case in response to the Justice Department’s lawsuit. The judge referred the matter to Cave for a ruling.

Part of the discovery work involves about 150 depositions requested by the DOJ and Visa, plus those conducted by merchants and cardholders that are also suing Visa in separate cases.

Visa and the DOJ “have scheduled most of the depositions requested by the government,” Rogers said. Three Visa employees have been deposed so far, including one on Friday, she said. Another 16 depositions are scheduled for September, Rogers said.

The DOJ has requested depositions from four dozen Visa witnesses, and the company has “some concerns about the thought and care being made into which Visa witnesses are really needed,” Rogers told the judge.

Attorney Michele Trichler of the DOJ’s antitrust division told Cave that Visa had four CEOs during the period covered by the lawsuit, along with numerous employees that had different roles back then, requiring a larger number of witnesses’ testimony. Visa’s current CEO, Ryan McInerney, was preceded by Alfred Kelly Jr., Charles Scharf and Joseph Saunders over the past 19 years.

“The most important thing for us is to make sure there’s a process in place and get things scheduled,” to avoid further delays, Trichler said.