The Visa-Mastercard swipe-fee settlement and high-risk merchants: what changes after the November 16, 2026 hearing (and what doesn't)

Key takeaways

• Nothing is in force. The June 9, 2026 order in the interchange case is preliminary approval only. No effective date for any term appears in the primary record.
• Four terms matter (Doc. 9884; Visa's June 9, 2026 statement): a 10 basis point reduction in the combined average effective US credit interchange rate for five years, standard US consumer credit interchange capped at 125 bps, Honor All Cards relief at card-category level, and surcharging even where you don't surcharge other credit networks.
• Honor All Issuers is not relieved. The order says neither settlement offers any relief from it, so your acquirer can still require you to accept every issuer of a brand you accept.
• Interchange is one line in your cost stack. For a high-risk card-not-present account, processor markup, rolling reserves, chargeback fees, registration fees and gateway fees are the lines that actually decide your all-in cost.
• Surcharging today is capped at the lesser of your cost of acceptance or 3%, needs 30 days' notice to your acquirer, excludes debit and prepaid, and is barred outright in some states. None of that changes on November 16.

Where this stands right now

The Visa-Mastercard settlement high risk merchants have been reading about is pending. It has not been finally approved and it has not been rejected. For anyone tracking the interchange settlement 2026 headlines, the practical position is simple: nothing changes yet.

On June 9, 2026, Judge Brian M. Cogan of the Eastern District of New York granted preliminary approval in In re Payment Card Interchange Fee and Merchant Discount Antitrust Litigation, No. 05-md-1720, Doc. 9884. The order's closing line is one sentence: "The motion for preliminary settlement approval is granted. SO ORDERED."

What's scheduled:

Item	Detail	Where it comes from
Fairness / final-approval hearing	November 16, 2026, 11:00 a.m. ET, before Judge Cogan, E.D.N.Y., 225 Cadman Plaza East, Brooklyn	Court-authorized settlement notice; objectors' filings dated September 14, 2026 referencing a "Fairness Hearing on November 16, 2026"
Objection deadline	September 14, 2026 - already passed	Court-authorized settlement notice
Class period	Merchants that accepted Visa and/or Mastercard in the US between December 18, 2020 and June 9, 2026	Court-authorized settlement notice
Class type	Mandatory Rule 23(b)(2) class, over 12 million merchants, no opt-out	Doc. 9884; settlement notice ("You cannot be excluded")
Cash payment	None - this is an equitable-relief settlement	Court-authorized settlement notice
Attorneys' fees	Capped at $206,000,000, Visa up to two-thirds and Mastercard up to one-third	Doc. 9884

The hearing date is confirmed twice over: the court-authorized notice sets it, and objectors filing on the September 14 deadline state their intent to appear at a "Fairness Hearing on November 16, 2026." Every piece of relief described below depends on that one event - the Visa Mastercard settlement November 16, 2026 fairness hearing is the gate, not the finish line. If you're reading this after that date, stop relying on this page. Check the docket and the official settlement site at InterchangeEquitableReliefSettlement.com for the actual outcome.

An honest note on timing. We would like to tell you the date your rate changes. We can't, because the primary record doesn't say. No effective date for the 10 bps reduction, the 125 bps cap, the category-level acceptance relief or the expanded surcharging appears in Doc. 9884 or in Visa's June 9, 2026 statement - and Visa's statement ends by noting the agreement "is subject to final approval by the court." Any blog or vendor deck giving you a rollout date is guessing, and so is anyone who tells you the terms are live.

What the settlement would actually change

Four terms, and only four, do the work for merchants. Everything below is quoted or paraphrased from the preliminary approval order and Visa's June 9, 2026 statement.

Term	What it says	Source
Rate reduction	A reduction of the "combined average effective" US credit interchange rate of 10 basis points for five years; the order describes it as "that reduction would be ten basis points" under the Amended Settlement	Doc. 9884; Visa June 9, 2026 statement
Cap on standard consumer credit	Posted interchange on standard US consumer credit cards capped at 125 basis points, described in the order as "for at least eight years" and in Visa's statement as "through the term of the agreement"	Doc. 9884; Visa June 9, 2026 statement
Honor All Cards relief	Merchants may "choose whether to accept U.S. credit cards in distinct categories - commercial, premium consumer and standard consumer." The order says the Amended Settlement "would effectively repeal the Honor All Cards rule" at that level	Doc. 9884; Visa June 9, 2026 statement
Surcharging	Merchants "will have more options to surcharge, including if they do not surcharge other credit networks"; relief applies "regardless of whether the merchants were to accept or surcharge comparator cards"	Doc. 9884; Visa June 9, 2026 statement

Three things that table does not say, each of which gets misread:

Honor All Issuers survives. The honor all cards settlement relief is category-level and nothing more; the order is explicit that "neither Settlement would offer any relief from the Honor All Issuers rule." You could, eventually, decline a whole card category. You still could not decline one bank's cards within a brand you accept. That's the rule that actually blocks narrow acceptance strategies, and it isn't going anywhere.

The surcharge ceiling. Under the settlement, merchants may surcharge "up to the lesser of the full cost of acceptance or 3% of the transaction." That's the same shape as today's Visa rule (more on that in the next section), which matters: it is not an uncapped surcharge right.

Nothing is available today. Each of the four terms depends on final approval, survives likely appeals, and would need network rule changes before a checkout could act on it. No Visa or Mastercard rule bulletin implementing any of these terms has surfaced in the record we reviewed.

Why your high-risk rate probably does not move much

Our analysis:

Interchange is what your acquirer pays the issuer. On a high-risk card-not-present account, it's rarely the line that hurts. The lines that hurt:

• Processor/acquirer markup - the risk premium layered on top of interchange. This is what prices your chargeback history, your MCC, your ticket size and your billing model.
• Rolling reserves - a percentage of volume held back, often for months. Real cash, not a rate.
• Chargeback fees - per-dispute charges plus the monitoring consequences when your ratio climbs.
• Fixed and semi-fixed fees - application, monthly, annual, registration, PCI, gateway, per-transaction, 3-D Secure.
• Volume and category fees - see our breakdown of Mastercard's specialty merchant fees for how a fixed dollar figure lands harder on a small merchant than any basis point move.

An illustrative arithmetic example, built only from figures already cited above. Say you process $100,000 a month in US consumer credit volume. Ten basis points of that volume is 0.10%, or $100 a month - about $1,200 a year. Now hold that against the all-in pricing our comparison guide reports for high-risk accounts, which sits in the 3–4.5% range: 10 bps is roughly a fortieth to a sixtieth of that all-in number, and it only touches the interchange slice of it. If your markup, reserve and fee load consume the rest, a 10 bps move is a rounding error against your effective rate.

Two more reasons to stay calm:

It's a combined average, not your rate card. The term is a 10 bps cut to the combined average effective rate - an average across the networks' US credit portfolios. Your statement is built from individual interchange categories, and whether a given category moves is a separate question nobody has answered yet.

Caps compress the top, not the bottom. The 125 bps ceiling lands on standard consumer credit. High-risk CNP volume skews toward the categories your acquirer already prices with a risk premium attached - the settlement doesn't rewrite your markup.

Can I surcharge or decline premium cards?

Short answer: not the way the settlement describes, because the settlement isn't in force. What you can do today is narrower than most merchants assume.

Today's Visa rules on surcharging

Requirement	Detail
Cap	Not more than your merchant discount rate for that card, or 3%, whichever is lower. Where cost of acceptance exceeds 3%, you still can't go above 3% - the US maximum is 3.00% (Visa Core Rules §5.5.1.8)
Notice	At least 30 calendar days' prior written notice to your acquirer before you start (Visa Core Rules §5.5.1.5, Notification of Intent to Assess Surcharges – US Region and US Territories)
Card types	Credit only. Debit and prepaid cannot be surcharged, even if the cardholder selects "credit" at the terminal
Level	Brand level or product level - not both
Cross-network	You may only surcharge Visa if you don't surcharge equal- or higher-cost competing networks (Visa Core Rules §5.5.1.6, Similar Treatment of Visa Transactions)
Receipt	Surcharge itemized separately on the transaction receipt; disclosure at point of entry and point of sale
Messaging	Surcharge amount must travel in the dedicated Field 28 field
Enforcement	Your acquirer can be assessed an immediate US$1,000 fine for improper surcharging

One citation to keep straight: §5.5.1.6 is the cross-network Similar Treatment of Visa Transactions rule, which is why the cross-network row points there. Notice sits in §5.5.1.5, and the 3.00% US maximum sits in §5.5.1.8.

What the settlement would add

Two things, once it's approved and implemented: category-level acceptance (commercial, premium consumer, standard consumer) and surcharging even where you don't surcharge other credit networks. That second item is the meaningful one for card-not-present merchants, because today's cross-network condition is what kills most surcharge programs before they start.

If you're on the Visa CE3.0 timeline, you already know the pattern: a rule change is announced, then implemented, and merchants who act on the announcement instead of the implementation eat the losses. Same discipline here. Nothing in this section is available today, and if you start surcharging without the 30-day notice, you're exposed regardless of what the settlement eventually says.

State law still governs

Here's the part that gets buried: card network permission is not state permission. The credit card surcharge rules 2026 merchants actually have to follow are mostly state rules, and state law follows the merchant's location. Visa's own surcharging guidance, in a state list dated February 15, 2024, names five jurisdictions that prohibited surcharging and four that impose requirements. State law follows the merchant's location.

Jurisdiction	Visa's Feb 15, 2024 position	What to verify now
Connecticut	Prohibited	Conn. Gen. Stat. §42-133ff as amended by PA 24-142 - DCP's credit card surcharge guidance treats a payment-type surcharge as prohibited while allowing cash discounts and dual pricing
Maine	Prohibited	Current statute and any amendments
Massachusetts	Prohibited	Current statute and any amendments
Oklahoma	Prohibited as of Feb 15, 2024	SB 677 repealed the ban effective November 1, 2025 and caps surcharges at the lesser of 2% or actual processing cost under 14A O.S. §2-211 - Visa's 2024 list is out of date here
Puerto Rico	Prohibited	Current territorial law
Colorado	Surcharge requirements	Current disclosure rules
Minnesota	Surcharge requirements	Current disclosure rules
New Jersey	Surcharge requirements	Current disclosure rules
New York	Surcharge requirements	GBS §518: you must display the highest total price before purchase, excluding sales tax. A separate surcharge line on the receipt without that posted total price is not compliant

Oklahoma is the cautionary example: a two-year-old network list was already wrong for one of the five "prohibited" states. Check your own state's current law, in the state where the merchant of record sits - not where your customer sits.

What this means for card-not-present and high-risk merchants specifically

Four things change nothing, and it's worth being blunt about them.

Underwriting doesn't move on interchange. Your approval is a judgment about risk: chargeback exposure, ticket size, descriptor clarity, billing model, refund policy, vertical, geography. A 10 bps interchange cut doesn't shift any of those inputs, so it doesn't loosen approval criteria, reduce reserves or shorten an application.

Chargeback exposure is untouched. Nothing in Doc. 9884 rewrites dispute rules, evidence requirements or monitoring thresholds. If your ratio is climbing, the settlement is irrelevant to that problem.

Reserves are contractual, not regulatory. Your reserve percentage and release schedule come from your agreement and your acquirer's risk appetite - see rolling reserves explained for how those schedules actually work and how to negotiate against them.

MATCH risk is real and personal. A shutdown with cause can land you on the MATCH list for five years (Mastercard's SPM E manual states merchant records remain on MATCH for five years and are purged monthly); the reasons, codes and removal path are covered in our MATCH/TMF guide. Whether interchange dropped 10 bps will not be part of that conversation. Neither will the outcome of a settlement hearing, if you're already in a frozen account situation.

The one place category-level acceptance could matter: high-risk merchants selling products with high chargebacks often want to decline a card tier rather than an entire brand. If that relief ever arrives, it becomes an underwriting question - some acquirers will treat restricted acceptance as a lower-risk profile, others as a signal of a struggling merchant. Vertical shocks still dominate: a processor exit in your vertical, like the reported CBD and hemp pullback, moves your cost far more than a basis point.

What to ask your processor now

Ask these in writing and keep the answers. "Solid" means a specific, dated, documented answer. "Worry" means deflection.

Question	Solid answer	Worry
Which interchange categories do you bill me at, and where are they listed?	A schedule or statement line item showing categories and rates, updated when networks change them	"It's all bundled into your rate"
Is your markup a fixed percentage, or does it float with interchange?	"Fixed X% over cost" or "flat Y%, interchange included" - stated plainly	A percentage you can't decompose, or a pass-through with no visibility
If settlement-driven interchange changes land, will they pass through to me - and how will I see it?	A named report or statement line, plus a commitment to show the before/after	"You'll get the benefit automatically," with no mechanism
What is my reserve percentage, and what's the release schedule?	A number, a hold period, a release trigger, in the contract	"Standard reserve," or a percentage with no end date
What are my per-transaction, chargeback, registration and gateway fees?	An itemized fee schedule in the agreement	Fees that appear only on the first statement
Can my checkout and gateway support category-level acceptance and surcharging if it ever arrives?	A named capability and a test path	"We'll figure that out when it happens"
What notice do you need from me before I surcharge?	A written process, timelines and the documents they file	"Just tell your rep"
If I decline premium cards, what happens to my rate?	A repriced schedule, in writing, before you change anything	A vague warning about "adverse selection"

Our guide to comparing high-risk processor offers has the longer version of this list, including the reserve structures that quietly cost more than a marked-up rate.

How Find a Processor helps

The settlement conversation ends the same way for most merchants: your actual cost depends on who is underwriting you, not on what a judge does in Brooklyn.

Find a Processor is an advisory and matching service built for high-risk merchants. The service is free to merchants: processors pay us for the introduction, so you pay nothing. One conversation puts your file in front of a portfolio of processors that want to work with your business model, your geography and your checkout - not in front of a list of who claims to "support high risk."

What that looks like in practice: we walk through applications line by line, translate pricing into a form you can compare, pressure-test reserve percentages and release schedules, and flag contract terms - term length, exit fees, shutdown language - that cost more than a 10 bps rate cut ever will. If you've been declined or shut down before, we work from what happened rather than starting over.

FAQ

Will the settlement lower my high-risk processing costs? Probably not much, and not on its own. The relief is a 10 bps cut to combined average effective US credit interchange for five years, plus a 125 bps cap on standard consumer credit - both pending final approval. Your high-risk rate is dominated by markup, reserves and fees.

Can I surcharge now? Yes, within existing Visa rules: not more than your merchant discount rate or 3%, whichever is lower, with 30 calendar days' prior written notice to your acquirer, credit cards only, itemized on the receipt. Many states restrict or forbid it, and the settlement's expanded surcharging is not available yet.

Can I refuse premium cards now? No. Category-level acceptance (commercial, premium consumer, standard consumer) is a settlement term that isn't in force. Today you accept at brand level, and Honor All Issuers still requires you to take every issuer within a brand you accept.

When would the terms take effect? There's no answer in the primary record. No effective date for any term appears in Doc. 9884 or Visa's June 9, 2026 statement. Final approval, appeals and network rule changes all sit between the November 16, 2026 hearing and anything you'd see on a statement.

Do I get a cash payment? No. This is an equitable-relief settlement - the court-authorized notice states there is no monetary payment to class members. The $206,000,000 attorneys' fee figure is a separate cap paid by the networks, not a pool for merchants.

Do I need to do anything to be in the class? No. It's a mandatory Rule 23(b)(2) class covering merchants that accepted Visa and/or Mastercard in the US between December 18, 2020 and June 9, 2026, and you cannot opt out. There's no claim form and no deadline to file.

What happens if the court rejects the settlement? The terms never take effect and the litigation continues, with the parties free to negotiate again or go to trial. Your processing costs stay where they are.

Does this affect my reserves? No. Reserves are set by your agreement and your acquirer's risk assessment, not by network interchange rules. A settlement term won't move a reserve percentage.

Does this change chargeback rules? No. Nothing in the order touches dispute timelines, compelling evidence, monitoring programs or ratio thresholds. Chargeback rules change through network bulletins, not through this settlement.

Does this cover Mastercard as well as Visa? The case involves both networks, and the order describes relief across them. The court order covers both networks and is the source for the terms described here.

Does a 10 bps cut apply to my account automatically? Not by itself. Whether any interchange change reaches your statement depends on your pricing model - flat rate, tiered, or true pass-through - and on your processor's implementation. That's exactly what the questions in the previous section are designed to surface.

Is this legal advice? No. This is general information about a pending case and current network rules. Talk to a payments attorney or your state's regulator about your own surcharging and acceptance decisions.

Sources

• In re Payment Card Interchange Fee and Merchant Discount Antitrust Litigation, No. 05-md-1720 (E.D.N.Y.), Doc. 9884, preliminary approval order, filed June 9, 2026 - rate rollback and 125 bps standard-consumer cap discussion; Honor All Cards and category-level findings; "neither Settlement would offer any relief from the Honor All Issuers rule"; surcharge ceiling of the lesser of cost of acceptance or 3%; Rule 23(b)(2) class and attorneys' fee cap.
• Visa, statement on the MDL settlement, June 9, 2026 - 10 bps reduction in combined average effective US credit interchange for five years; 125 bps cap; commercial/premium consumer/standard consumer acceptance categories; surcharging "including if they do not surcharge other credit networks"; subject to final approval.
• Visa, Merchant Surcharging Q&A - surcharge cap of the merchant discount rate or 3%; 30-day notice; debit and prepaid exclusion; brand-or-product level; cross-network condition; US$1,000 acquirer fine; Field 28; state surcharging list dated February 15, 2024.
• Visa, Merchant Surcharging Considerations and Requirements - cost of acceptance above 3%; notice requirements; itemized receipt and point-of-entry/point-of-sale disclosure; debit and prepaid prohibition.
• Visa Core Rules and Visa Product and Service Rules, public rulebook (PDF) - §5.5.1.5 (30 calendar days' notice of intent to assess surcharges, US Region and US Territories); §5.5.1.6 (similar treatment of Visa transactions across competing networks); §5.5.1.8 (3.00% US maximum credit card surcharge).
• Mastercard Security Rules and Procedures, SPM E manual (PDF) - merchant records remain on the MATCH system for five years; MATCH automatically purges merchant information each month once it reaches five years.
• Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection, credit card surcharge guidance - Conn. Gen. Stat. §42-133ff as amended by PA 24-142; cash discount and dual pricing allowances.
• New York Department of State / Division of Consumer Protection, credit card surcharge one-page reference guide, April 2024 - GBS §518; requirement to display the highest total price before purchase; receipt line-item limits.
• Oklahoma SB 677, enrolled bill (2025) - repeal of 14A O.S. §2-417 effective November 1, 2025; surcharge capped at the lesser of 2% or actual processing cost under 14A O.S. §2-211.
• InterchangeEquitableReliefSettlement.com - official settlement site: notice, hearing date, objection deadline, class definition.

The bottom line

A hearing on November 16, 2026 doesn't reprice your account. If you want your cost of acceptance to move in the next quarter, the lever is your processor relationship - markup, reserve, fees and contract terms - not a docket entry.

Start with Find a Processor and get your current statement in front of people who price high-risk volume for a living. One conversation and a clear view of what your rate is actually made of.