Visa and Mastercard Settlement 2026: What Changes for Merchants

TL;DR

The Visa and Mastercard settlement with U.S. merchants goes to a final approval hearing in Brooklyn on November 16, 2026. It does not pay anyone cash and there is no claim form. It changes the rules: you could stop accepting premium rewards cards, add a surcharge of up to 3% only on the card types that cost you the most, and pick which digital wallets you take. It also caps standard consumer credit card interchange at 1.25% and lowers the average credit interchange rate by 0.10 percentage points for five years. Whether any of that reaches your statement depends mostly on one thing: whether you pay a flat rate or interchange-plus.

Which settlement is this?

Two different settlements came out of the same 20-year case, and most of the confusion online comes from mixing them up.

• The cash settlement (about $5.5 billion). This one paid damages to merchants that accepted Visa or Mastercard between January 1, 2004 and January 25, 2019. It has its own claims administrator at paymentcardsettlement.com. If you filed a claim there, your payment comes from that process.
• The rules settlement (the one in the news now). Signed on November 10, 2025, it covers more than 12 million merchants. There is no money to claim and you cannot opt out. Reports describe it as worth about $38 billion, but that figure is estimated savings over time, not a fund.

Judge Margo Brodie rejected an earlier version of the rules settlement in June 2024. Judge Brian Cogan gave the new version preliminary approval in June 2026 and will decide on final approval at the November 16 hearing.

What changes if it is approved

Everything below comes from the agreement text Visa filed with the SEC on November 10, 2025. Mastercard's commitments mirror Visa's.

1. You can decline whole categories of credit cards

Today the "Honor All Cards" rule means that if you take Visa credit, you take every Visa credit card. The settlement splits credit cards into three categories, and you can accept or decline each one:

Three limits matter. The choice is all-or-nothing within a category: you cannot take one bank's Signature cards and refuse another's. It applies to every location you run under the same trade name. And debit cards stay a separate decision, as they already are.

2. You can surcharge only the expensive cards

You will be able to surcharge in one of two ways, but not both:

• Brand level: the same surcharge on every Visa credit card.
• Product level: a different surcharge per card type, for example nothing on a Visa Traditional card and 2% on a Visa Infinite.

Either way, the surcharge cannot be more than 3% or more than what that card actually costs you to accept, whichever is lower. If you cannot work out your cost, the agreement lets you treat it as 3%. You have to give your processor 30 days' written notice, explain the surcharge at checkout, and show the dollar amount on the receipt. This is about credit cards only. Debit cards still cannot be surcharged.

3. You can choose your digital wallets

You will be able to accept some wallets and not others, in store and online. The choice is per wallet, not per card inside the wallet.

4. Interchange gets capped and trimmed

• Posted credit interchange rates cannot rise above their March 31, 2025 levels for five years.
• Posted rates on standard consumer credit cards drop to no more than 1.25%, and the settlement notice says that cap holds for eight years.
• Each network's average effective credit interchange rate must be at least 0.10 percentage points below the combined average for the 12 months that ended March 31, 2025, for five years.

When it would actually happen

Nothing changes on November 16 itself. The agreement sets the clock from the day the court enters final judgment:

The rule changes run from the approval date, not from the end of any appeal. The National Retail Federation, the Retail Industry Leaders Association and Walmart have all filed objections, and an appeal is widely expected. The judge can also refuse final approval. Treat the dates above as the best case.

What it is worth to a small business

Here is the math on the two parts that touch your costs directly. The rates are Visa's posted U.S. rates as of March 2025, which are attached to the settlement.

The 0.10 point cut

The cut is an average across the whole network, so your own number will be a bit higher or lower depending on your card mix. The Merchants Payments Coalition called it "minuscule". For a small shop, it is.

The 1.25% cap on standard cards

This part is bigger for online sellers. Visa's posted card-not-present rate for a Traditional card was 1.89% + $0.10, and 2.04% + $0.10 for Traditional Rewards. Capped at 1.25%, a $100 online sale on a standard card costs about $0.64 to $0.79 less in interchange, assuming the $0.10 per-transaction part stays the same (the agreement caps the rate and does not say anything about that fee). In store, Visa's retail rates for standard cards ran 1.43% to 1.65% + $0.10, so the gain is smaller.

The premium card gap you could now act on

On the same March 2025 schedule, a card-present retail sale cost 1.43% to 1.65% + $0.10 on a standard Visa card, 2.10% + $0.10 on Visa Signature Preferred, and up to 2.30% + $0.10 on Visa Infinite. Online, Infinite ran 2.60% + $0.10. That gap of roughly 0.5 to 0.9 points is what the new category and product-level surcharge rules let you push back on.

The catch: flat-rate pricing hides all of it

Interchange is what the card-issuing bank charges. Your processor adds its own margin on top. How that reaches you depends on your pricing model:

• Flat rate (for example 2.6% + $0.15 in person, 2.9% + $0.30 online). The processor pays interchange and keeps the difference. If interchange falls, your price stays the same unless the processor decides to lower it. Nothing in the settlement makes it.
• Interchange-plus or subscription (interchange at cost plus a fixed markup, or plus a monthly fee). Interchange is passed through line by line, so a lower rate shows up on your next statement with no action from you.

The same split decides whether you can use the new surcharge rules at all. Product-level surcharging needs a system that can tell a Traditional card from an Infinite card before the payment is approved. Processors that bill a single flat rate have less reason to build that, and some may never offer it.

Disclosure: links to providers below go through our referral tracker, and we may earn a fee if you sign up. It does not change what we write.

Pricing models are from each provider's own pricing page, as summarized in our 2026 processor ranking.

Should you stop taking premium cards?

For most small businesses, no. Premium rewards cards are a large share of consumer credit spending, and the people who carry them tend to spend more per visit. Say you run $50,000 a month and 40% of it is on premium cards that cost you about 0.6 points more than standard ones. That premium is about $120 a month. Losing three or four regular customers who walk out when their Sapphire card is refused costs more than that.

The better uses of the new rules are narrower:

• Commercial cards are the most expensive category (Visa's posted card-not-present rate for purchasing and corporate cards was 2.70% + $0.10). If you sell to consumers and rarely see business cards, declining that category costs little.
• A product-level surcharge on premium cards only, where your state allows it, recovers the gap without refusing anyone.
• A plain request at checkout is explicitly allowed. The agreement says telling a customer you prefer a lower-cost card is not "disparaging" the brand.

State law still applies

The settlement changes Visa and Mastercard's rules. It does not change state law. Massachusetts prohibits credit card surcharges outright, several other states cap or restrict them, and some require the surcharge to be built into the advertised price rather than added at the register. Check your state before you change your signage, and remember that a debit card surcharge is off the table everywhere.

What to do now

1. Find your pricing model. Pull last month's statement and look for interchange listed line by line. If you only see one percentage, you are on a flat rate. Our guide to reading a merchant statement shows where to look.
2. Work out your effective rate. Total fees divided by total card volume. Run your volume through the fee calculator to see what interchange-plus would cost you.
3. Ask your processor three questions: Will you pass the interchange cut through, and when? Can your system identify card product type before authorization? Will you support product-level surcharging and category acceptance?
4. Do not change signage or start surcharging yet. The network rules change only after final judgment, and surcharges need 30 days' notice to your processor once they do.
5. Watch November 16. If the judge approves, expect the networks to publish rule updates within about 90 days.