Overview
- Visa and Mastercard are in advanced talks on a settlement that would trim interchange fees by about 0.1 percentage point on average over several years, according to the Wall Street Journal as cited by Reuters.
- Merchants could choose which categories of cards to accept, with potential groupings such as rewards, no‑rewards, and commercial cards replacing current accept‑all rules.
- The discussions include expanded latitude for stores to add surcharges when customers pay by credit card.
- Both networks declined to comment, and no agreement has been announced, with reports describing the deal as expected soon but not final.
- The talks follow a long-running case dating to 2005 and a separate settlement reported last year that imposed smaller cuts and caps, while analysts say any new changes could pressure the economics that fund card rewards.