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OHIO v. AMERICAN EXPRESS CO. 

Opinion of the Court 

When  a  cardholder  uses  a  credit  card  to  buy  something
from a merchant, the transaction is facilitated by a credit-
card  network.    The  network  provides  separate  but  inter-
related  services  to  both  cardholders  and  merchants.    For 
cardholders,  the  network  extends  them  credit,  which 
allows them to make purchases without cash and to defer
payment until later.  Cardholders also can receive rewards 
based on the amount of money they spend, such as airline 
miles, points for travel, or cash back.  For merchants, the 
network allows them to avoid the cost of processing trans-
actions and offers them quick, guaranteed payment.  This 
saves  merchants  the  trouble  and  risk  of  extending  credit 
to  customers,  and  it  increases  the  number  and  value  of 
sales that they can make.

By  providing  these  services  to  cardholders  and  mer-
chants, credit-card companies bring these parties together, 
and  therefore  operate  what  economists  call  a  “two-sided 
platform.”    As  the  name  implies,  a  two-sided  platform
offers different products or services to two different groups 
who both depend on the platform to intermediate between
them.  See  Evans  &  Schmalensee,  Markets  With  Two-
Sided  Platforms,  1  Issues  in  Competition  L.  &  Pol’y  667 
(2008)  (Evans  &  Schmalensee);  Evans  &  Noel,  Defining 
Antitrust  Markets  When  Firms  Operate  Two-Sided  Plat-
forms, 2005 Colum. Bus. L. Rev. 667, 668 (Evans & Noel); 
Filistrucchi,  Geradin,  Van  Damme,  &  Affeldt,  Market 
Definition in Two-Sided Markets: Theory and Practice, 10
J.  Competition  L.  &  Econ.  293,  296  (2014)  (Filistrucchi). 
For  credit  cards,  that  interaction  is  a  transaction.    Thus, 
credit-card  networks  are  a  special  type  of  two-sided  plat-
form  known  as  a  “transaction”  platform.    See  id.,  at  301, 
304,  307;  Evans  &  Noel  676–678.    The  key  feature  of 
transaction  platforms  is  that  they  cannot  make  a  sale  to 
one side of the platform without simultaneously making a 
sale  to  the  other.    See  Klein,  Lerner,  Murphy,  &  Plache, 
Competition  in  Two-Sided  Markets:  The  Antitrust  Eco-