BC Card Co., a local payment services provider, is stepping up its offensive against Visa, condemning the global credit card giant for pressing unfair business activities onto its Korean partners.

On Monday, BC Card filed a report with the Fair Trade Commission over the U.S.-based company’s overseas fee system.

“Visa is conducting illegal activities against the Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Act, mandating its affiliated card companies to use VisaNet, its global fee payment system,” BC Card said in the letter of complaint.

“Unfairly interrupting BC’s business activities, the company aims to strengthen its dominance in the global card networks market,” the statement continued.

During a breakfast meeting on Wednesday, which was organized by the Federation of Korean Industries, the nation’s top business lobby group, BC Card CEO Lee Jong-ho again called for the state-run antitrust regulator to launch a thorough investigation into Visa.

In response, FTC chairman Kim Dong-soo said that “a special team at the headquarters will probe the case, considering the sensitivity of the issue.”

Visa charges a fee equal to 1 percent of the transaction amount whenever a BC-Visa card is used in automatic transaction machines outside of Korea.

However, BC has refused to follow the clause since October 2009, by forming a partnership with the U.S.-based Star Network, through which the fee is about 77 percent cheaper.

With no agreement made between the two over the past two years, Visa on June 15 fined BC Card $50,000 for enabling overseas credit card transactions to be carried out without using its network and, the company said, it would continue to do so in the coming months.

Visa also imposed another $50,000 fine on BC Card for the Korean firm’s similar arrangement with China’s Union Pay Co. In a written statement released on Monday, the Chinese payment card network made public its support for BC’s action.

“We have abided by related Korean laws thus far. We will sincerely cooperate for the investigation,” a Visa Korea official said on Thursday, adding that the company has yet to receive such a request from the FTC.

“As a global company, we are applying the same rules to our other partners in Korea and other countries. It’s not true that the Korean case was unprecedented around the world,” the official said.

Industry sources said that the high-handed stance of Visa was largely driven by local card companies that have sought higher profits by overly issuing international-use credit cards.

The annual fee for international-use cards is more than 10,000 won ($9.40), almost double the 5,000 won for those for domestic-use only. But consumers are not advised enough about the fee difference, critics said.

According to the latest data released on Wednesday, the loyalty fees that local card issuers pay to global payment services providers, such as Visa and MasterCard, have continued to surge in recent years. Last year the amount reached 180 billion won, a four-fold increase over the past five years.

Of the total 110 million credit cards issued here last year, international-use cards made up almost 70 percent. However, 87 percent of them had no records of overseas transactions in the same period.

By Lee Ji-yoon (jylee@heraldcorp.com)