Mastercard MA persuades a U.S. judge to dismiss a lawsuit from a technology startup that accused the payments giant of illegally blocking its efforts to build a “universal” digital wallet for consumers.

Mastercard MA has persuaded a U.S. judge in Boston to dismiss a lawsuit from a technology startup that accused the payments giant of illegally blocking its efforts to build a “universal” digital wallet for consumers.

A U.S. judge on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit from a technology startup that accused payments giant Mastercard (MA.N) of illegally blocking its efforts to build a “universal” digital wallet.

In her ruling, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani said plaintiff OV Loop had not presented enough facts to support its claim that Mastercard was monopolizing the market for mobile payment services for a consumer-merchant network.

“Plaintiff has not sufficiently alleged that Defendant has a monopoly in the market for mobile payment services for a consumer-merchant network,” Talwani said.

OV Loop’s lawsuit, filed last year, accused Mastercard of violating U.S. antitrust law by denying it access to an essential digital payments technology the company needed to help build a unified commerce platform. The Massachusetts-based company was seeking more than $75 million in damages.

Talwani also said OV Loop could not rebut a general rule in antitrust law that “a private business may exercise its own independent discretion in choosing parties with which to deal.”

“In the instant case, tying together the various factual allegations, Plaintiff has not sufficiently alleged that Defendant’s refusal to grant Plaintiff token services was not a matter of “independent discretion' and was instead an attempt to maintain its alleged monopoly power,” the judge said.

Mastercard declined to comment on Wednesday, and a lawyer for OV Loop did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

OV Loop’s lawsuit alleged Mastercard was granting selective access to tokens that the plaintiff said are needed for a company to compete for digital wallet payments like those used for Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Wallet.

Founded in 2018, OV Loop wants to develop and market a “super app” for digital commerce, offering services to consumers and merchants. In addition to tokens, OV Loop said it was able to obtain services from Visa (V.N).

In seeking dismissal of the lawsuit, Mastercard said OV Loop had failed to allege any actual refusal by Mastercard to do business with it.

“Despite the fact that Mastercard had no obligation to do so, it nonetheless engaged with Plaintiff for several months and made a business decision not to move forward with Plaintiff’s application for token services,” the company said in a filing last month.

Mastercard also said the startup’s claims were time-barred.

“Plaintiff’s claims arise from economic, technological and competitive conditions that existed at the time of the complaint and were not the result of any new conduct by Defendant,” the company said.

The case is OV Loop Inc v. Mastercard Inc, U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, No. 1:24-cv-10412.

For plaintiff: Lawrence Green of Burns & Levinson; Edward Kang of Kang Haggerty; and Oliver Griffin of Griffin Partners

For defendant: Kenneth Gallo of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison