A new proposed class action lawsuit alleges that Visa, Mastercard, and several of America's largest banks have conspired for decades to artificially inflate the fees merchants pay on credit card transactions. The case, filed on September 30, 2026 in the Southern District of New York (Case No. 1:26-cv-06087), was brought by a San Diego pizzeria on behalf of all merchants who accepted Visa or Mastercard credit cards since January 25, 2019.
The defendants include Bank of America, Capital One, Chase Bank, Citibank, and Wells Fargo, along with Visa Inc., Mastercard Incorporated, and their respective subsidiaries. The 134-page complaint accuses them of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act by maintaining a web of anticompetitive rules that prevent merchants from escaping uniformly high interchange fees—charges that merchants must pay to card-issuing banks on every transaction.
The alleged scheme: $100 billion in annual fees
According to the complaint, Visa and Mastercard have worked with the bank defendants for decades to set uniform schedules of interchange fees—the effectively non-negotiable charges merchants must pay to credit card-issuing banks on each transaction. The lawsuit also claims the companies artificially inflated their own network fees, adding what it describes as an 'additional supracompetitive tax' on each credit card purchase.
The suit contends that these interlocking rules have disabled normal market forces that could otherwise rein in costs. Merchants that accept any Visa or Mastercard credit card must accept all such cards, regardless of cost, eliminating any incentive for issuing banks to compete by lowering their fees, the complaint states. Merchants are also prevented from surcharging based on a customer's use of a particular card or steering customers toward lower-cost payment options.
- Merchants allegedly pay over $100 billion annually in interchange and network fees to accept Visa and Mastercard credit cards.
