Merchants should support a swipe-fee settlement with Visa and Mastercard because it gives them more flexibility to impose surcharges, according to plaintiffs in a 21-year-old lawsuit targeting Visa and Mastercard fees.
A proposed settlement with the two largest card networks over interchange fees and card-acceptance rules presents an opportunity to educate consumers about the costs of various cards and steer payment choices to less-expensive cards, the plaintiffs’ class counsel wrote in a court filing last week.
The parties in the swipe-fee litigation, which dates to 2005, filed their replies last week to counter objections from merchants who want a federal judge in New York to reject the pact reached in November.
Merchants are becoming more comfortable about collecting surcharges as consumer anger and point-of-sale friction are “no longer the concern that it once may have been,” lawyers for the class plaintiffs wrote Jan. 14 in their 151-page reply to the merchants that objected to the settlement.