> The antisteering provisions do not, however, prevent merchants from steering customers toward debit cards, checks, or cash.
So Ohio v Amex is about having different prices for AmEx compared to Visa/MC/Discover, whereas Expressions Hair design was about having different prices for cash/debit compared to credit cards.
I think what happened was due to Dodd Frank in 2010 explicitly allowing cash/debit card discounts, and political focus on credit card processors from states to drop their requirements that merchants not have different prices for cash/debit/credit card purchases, all the processors backed off from
preventing merchants to not give lower pricing to cash/debit card users. However, Visa/MC even backed off from preventing merchants from giving lower pricing for any other card processor, since they wanted to avoid anti trust scrutiny since they are already so prominent. However, AmEx decided to fight it, and won big not just for AmEx but other two sided markets.
It definitely leads to a logically inconsistent result where merchants can display different prices, but the route taken to get to each decision was wildly different. Amex could have maintained in its contracts that merchants could not offer lower pricing for cash/debit cards, but I think AmEx wanted to avoid the way that would make them look (Amex versus Visa/MC is a David v Goliath case, whereas AmEx vs cash/debit is rich people versus poor people).
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/16-1454
> The antisteering provisions do not, however, prevent merchants from steering customers toward debit cards, checks, or cash.
So Ohio v Amex is about having different prices for AmEx compared to Visa/MC/Discover, whereas Expressions Hair design was about having different prices for cash/debit compared to credit cards.
I think what happened was due to Dodd Frank in 2010 explicitly allowing cash/debit card discounts, and political focus on credit card processors from states to drop their requirements that merchants not have different prices for cash/debit/credit card purchases, all the processors backed off from preventing merchants to not give lower pricing to cash/debit card users. However, Visa/MC even backed off from preventing merchants from giving lower pricing for any other card processor, since they wanted to avoid anti trust scrutiny since they are already so prominent. However, AmEx decided to fight it, and won big not just for AmEx but other two sided markets.
It definitely leads to a logically inconsistent result where merchants can display different prices, but the route taken to get to each decision was wildly different. Amex could have maintained in its contracts that merchants could not offer lower pricing for cash/debit cards, but I think AmEx wanted to avoid the way that would make them look (Amex versus Visa/MC is a David v Goliath case, whereas AmEx vs cash/debit is rich people versus poor people).
Here is a good comparison of both rulings:
https://jobs.luc.edu/media/lucedu/law/centers/antitrust/pdfs...
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/15-1391