Fees charged to retailers by banks for processing their debit card payments are to be investigated by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT).
They will now be scrutinised as part of the OFT's investigation of the interchange fees charged by the credit card operators Visa and Mastercard.
The OFT has previously called the credit card fees a tax on the consumer.
The widened investigation has been welcomed by the British Retail Consortium (BRC).
BRC Director General Kevin Hawkins said the charges were unjustifiable.
"Retailers have no choice but to accept cards belonging to Mastercard and Visa and to pay their fees for the privilege," he said.
"Mastercard and Visa have been sharply pushing up debit card fees with no convincing justification.
"With an ever-increasing proportion of retail sales now made on debit cards, it has to be right to include them," he added.
More investigation
The OFT has been investigating the credit card interchange fees for several years.
In 2005 it described them as anti-competitive and said they pushed up prices.
Last year, the European Commission launched its own investigation of the fees charged by Mastercard to its retail customers in Europe.
"The expansion of this investigation is consistent with the scope of the European Commission's current investigation into Mastercard's European intra-regional interchange fees," said the OFT.
This latest move by the OFT means that almost all the sources of profit of the banking industry are now under investigation.
Banks in the UK were told by the OFT last year to cut their repayment default charges for credit card customers.
It is currently investigating whether fees for unauthorised overdrafts on current accounts are also too high.
Separately, the Competition Commission said last year that store cards were charging interest rates that were too high and should now carry warnings about their levels of fees and charges.
Source: BBC News Online
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