PRA members are being offered help to recover over payments from card companies after the European Commission found that fees paid by merchants in Europe have been artificially inflated.

No final adjudication has been reached, but European merchants such as petrol retailers may have been paying too much to accept MasterCard and Visa forms of payment.

To help PRA members achieve possible recoveries of card fee overcharges, the PRA has been in discussion with law firm Strange & Butler.

The company has represented some of the largest merchants in the UK and Europe, including some large petrol retailers, over potential multilateral interchange fee (MIF) overcharges.

The potential overcharges occurred before to 2016. Regulations implemented in December 2015 capped MIFs at 0.2% for debit card transactions and 0.3% for credit cards.

High-profile actions have already taken place, including a claim of about £500m by Tesco against Visa, although it is not known how much was recovered in settlement.

To understand how much their businesses could recover and to effect an introduction to Strange & Butler PRA members should email memberfeedback@rmif.co.uk, with the heading “Card interchange fees”.

PRA says that if members wish to progress with a claim the process is simple and administratively light, and that Strange & Butler will work on a “no win, no fee” basis.

PRA is urging members to act quickly because the law restricts these type of claims to the past six years only.