Update 6/10/26: The judge has subject to this prior approval stating that the settlement was “just, reasonable and appropriate” and that he was likely to give final approval.
We posted it earlier Visa & Mastercard near settlement with merchants in 20-year-old lawsuit over anticompetitive interchange fees and merchant acceptance terms. An agreement has now been reached REACHED. The main points are as follows:
- Merchants do not have to accept all Visa/Mastercards if they accept one. Instead there will be three tiers or buckets that may or may not be accepted:
- Commercial cards
- Standard consumer cards
- Premium consumer cards
- Exchange rates will decrease by 0.1 percentage point over five years (2.35% on average in 2024)
- Possibility to charge additional fees for accepting card payments up to 3%
- $38 billion settlement (up from $30 billion rejected by judge in 2024)
Some trade groups have slammed the deal, saying, “You can’t suddenly tell more than 80% of your card customers you’re not going to take their cards,” while others say it disagrees with the concerns District Judge Margo Brodie in Brooklyn, New York raised when she rejected the earlier deal.
Our verdict
I can’t see many merchants not accepting ‘premium customers’ as the category is so broad and includes most if not all rewards earning cards. It will be interesting to see if the judge approves this deal or not, my uneducated guess is that it won’t.
