The competition authority of France has imposed a fine to 11 French banks of 381.1 million euros for the crime of fixing cheque handling fees. According to reports, an unjustified fee of 4.3 cents was imposed on four-fifth of the cheques passed on in France during January 2002 to July 2007.

The targeted banks are Banque de France, Banque Postale, BNP Paribas, BPCE, Confédération Nationale du Crédit Agricole, Crédit du Nord, CIC, Crédit Mutual, HSBC, LCL and Société Générale, which apparently combined and got together to fix prices while transiting to a system of digital cheque processing and clearing.

The remittent bank paid the pre-agreed fee to the drawee bank. The objective was apparently to make up for losses made by the fast clearing of cheque. However, according to the competition authority it was nothing but an artificial cost increase.

A fine of 3.8 million euros has also been imposed on them enforcing a couple more fees, which according to the authority was unjustified.

Cheques are the most preferred method of payment in France, and are responsible for 26 %of bank payments in 2006. A separate investigation has been launched by the competition authority to look into interbank credit card fees.