A class action was filed where Visa and Mastercard companies agree to pay a total of $264.24 million, including a new $197.5 million settlement with Visa and Mastercard for ATM surcharges and fees that allegedly violated federal consumer protection laws. According to these Class Action for ATM fees, consumers suffered excessive charges when they withdrew money from ATMs with surcharges or “intercargo” fees for swiping the card, using their Visa or Mastercard debit cards.
The class action alleged that Visa, Mastercard and other banks violated federal antitrust laws by adopting restrictions that increased ATM usage surcharges (also called ATM access fees) that were paid by consumers and businesses.
Visa, Mastercard face Class Action over ATM charges, antitrust fees
Visa, Mastercard, and the banks involved in this class action on ATM charges deny these allegations, and the court has not decided who is right. However, the class action settlement is open to claims. There was a previous agreement for almost $66 million with J.P. Morgan, Wells Fargo, Bank of America and other large US banks.
This class action alleges that Visa, Mastercard, and their member banks violated antitrust laws and charged merchants excessive amounts for accepting credit and debit card payments. Specifically, the class action claims that Visa and Mastercard, together with the member banks, set exchange fees at extremely high levels and applied rules that limited merchants from inviting customers to make use of other payment methods.
Offered by the companies involved to solve the Class Action
The total amount of the settlement is $264.24 million. This includes $197.5 million from Visa and Mastercard. The previous settlement for the ATM surcharge was $66.74 million. The breakdown of the settlement fund is divided as follows.
- Visa agreed to pay $104.6 million.
- Mastercard agreed to pay $92.8 million.
Learn how to find out if you qualify for a payment and how much you could receive
You may qualify if you paid a surcharge to withdraw cash from a bank ATM in the United States between October 1, 2007 and July 26, 2024. It is not included if all your surcharge ATM transactions were refunded or made with cards issued by financial institutions outside the United States.
If you filed a claim earlier and received payment, you may not need to do anything to receive payment from the new settlement. Your information should already be registered with the class action settlement administrators by ATM. A stated exception to this may be in the event that you have paid more qualifying ATM fees (as per the class action notice) after you have filed your class action claim earlier and have not received a refund of such fees.
What is the deadline for filing a claim?
If you have not submitted a valid claim previously, you must make a valid and timely claim now in order to receive a payment. Each claim will be eligible for a proportionate share of the ATM class action settlement fund, based on the total number of valid claims. Since the amount of the payment depends on the number of approved claims, it is impossible to know in advance exactly how much each payment will be.
If you did not file a claim in the above ATM surcharge class action settlements, you must make a claim no later than January 22, 2025 to get the class action settlement payment of $197,500,000 with Mastercard and Visa.
