Visa and Mastercard To Pay $199,500,000 Settlement After Allegedly Forcing Users To Cover Costs of Fraudulent Transactions

Visa and Mastercard just agreed to pay a whopping $199.5 million to resolve a class action lawsuit that’s been moving through the courts since 2016.

The lawsuit accused the payment giants of forcing businesses to absorb costs from fraudulent transactions involving counterfeit, lost and stolen cards.

Specifically, the lawsuit alleged antitrust violations were committed through coordinated changes to chargeback rules, which increased merchant costs without lowering transaction fees.

Merchants were hit with the additional costs if they were slow to upgrade their point-of-sale systems to process chip-enabled cards.

Visa will pay $119.7 million, and Mastercard will pay $79.8 million, reports Reuters.

Discover and American Express have already settled for $32.2 million, and all four companies deny any wrongdoing.

Details on how merchants will receive their share of the massive settlement are not yet publicly available.