A group of retailers including Iceland, Morrisons and the Arcadia Group, have today lost a court case in which they challenged MasterCard's card processing fees. They stated that since 2006, the charges had cost the retailers £437m, citing a lack of competitiveness in the market as a reason that the fees should not be lawful in that form. However, the case was ruled in favour of the card issuer, with the judge, Mr Justice Popplewell, stating that “the historic rates charged by the card issuer were necessary for it to function” in addition to the fact that “those rates were significantly below the lawful level of interchange that could have been charged to the retailers for those benefits”.