Sign Up for Visa & Mastercard Class Action Lawsuit
Visa & Mastercard class action lawsuit is currently open:
Those who meet eligibility criteria should apply before the deadline February 8, 2027. Visa and Mastercard ATM fee settlement: $167.5 million for people charged a fee at a non-bank ATM in the U.S. between October 2007 and August 2026.
Visa & Mastercard Class Action Lawsuit
If you have taken cash out of an ATM in a gas station, convenience store, bar or airport, the screen probably asked you to accept a fee first. This class action says Visa and Mastercard kept that fee higher than it should have been for almost twenty years. These are independent ATMs: machines not owned by a bank, Visa or Mastercard, whose operator sets its own fee, called a surcharge or access fee.
Every withdrawal travels over a payment network to reach your bank. Visa and Mastercard run networks, and so do rivals such as Pulse, NYCE and Star; the small logos on the back of your debit card show which ones it can use. According to the complaint, in 2013 Visa’s network charged the machine about 33 cents a withdrawal and paid it 17 cents, and Mastercard’s charged 41 cents and paid 5. Pulse and NYCE charged nothing and paid 28 and 38 cents.
An ATM covers its costs from two places: what the network pays it, and the fee you pay. So a machine on a cheaper network could afford to charge you less, and the lawsuit says ATMs would have, to win customers. Visa’s and Mastercard’s rules stopped them: any ATM that took their cards had to charge the same fee whichever network carried the withdrawal. The lawsuit calls that price fixing under the Sherman Antitrust Act and the antitrust laws of California, Illinois, Massachusetts and Michigan.
The case, Burke v. Visa Inc., No. 1:11-cv-01882, was filed in October 2011 in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, before Judge Richard J. Leon, and was certified as a class action in 2021. Visa and Mastercard deny wrongdoing, and no court has ruled either way. After a mediation led by former federal judge Layn Phillips, both sides signed a settlement on August 22, 2025.
Visa & Mastercard Class Action Settlement - $167,500,000
Visa and Mastercard have agreed to pay $167,500,000. Visa pays $88,775,000 and Mastercard pays $78,725,000. It follows the $197.5 million the same two companies agreed to pay in a related case, Mackmin v. Visa, over fees at ATMs run by banks.
Several things come out of the fund before claims are paid. The lawyers for the class, Finkelstein Thompson LLP and Lovell Stewart Halebian Jacobson LLP, will ask for up to 30% of the fund, which would be up to $50,250,000, plus their costs. Notice and processing claims can use up to $3,000,000. The four class representatives, the people who sued on behalf of everyone else, may each receive up to $17,500. Taxes are paid too, and the judge decides every one of these amounts. What remains is called the net settlement fund.
None of the money goes back to Visa or Mastercard, and anything left after every claim is paid goes to a nonprofit the court approves. The companies did keep one way out: either can cancel the deal if 6,000,000 or more people ask to be excluded from it.
The settlement covers people across the country who paid these fees between October 24, 2007 and August 14, 2026, with matching state groups for California, Illinois, Massachusetts and Michigan. Claims are due by February 8, 2027. Requests to be excluded, and objections, are due by December 11, 2026, and the final approval hearing is on February 17, 2027.
Deadline for filing a claim: February 8, 2027
Visa & Mastercard ATM Fee Class Action Payout: About $380 per claim (estimate)
There is no fixed payment. The net settlement fund is shared pro rata, which means in proportion: each valid claim gets a share sized by how many qualifying fees it reports, measured against every other valid claim. Someone who paid 300 of these fees gets ten times the share of someone who paid 30. Nobody can know the exact figure until every claim has been checked.
The best guide is the Mackmin settlement, which was run by the same administrator. It paid about $148.1 million across 296,877 valid claims, roughly $500 each on average. Here, about $114 million is likely to remain once the maximum fees and costs come out. If a similar number of valid claims arrives, that works out to roughly $380 per claim on average. Treat it as an estimate: more valid claims would shrink every share, and fewer would grow them.
The administrator expects eligible payments to go out within about six months of final approval if nobody appeals. They arrive by email and text, with a choice of PayPal, a virtual debit card, or a mailed check on request, which is why the claim form insists on a working email address and mobile number. A virtual card can strand a small balance you cannot spend or move, so PayPal or a check is usually the cleaner choice.
Bank & ATM Fee Class Action Settlements
Visa & Mastercard ATM Fee Class Action Eligibility
The quickest test is to picture the ATMs you have used since October 24, 2007. If one of them carried a company’s name rather than a bank’s, charged you a fee, and your bank did not refund it, you are likely part of this settlement. The class runs to August 14, 2026 and covers withdrawals made anywhere in the United States or its territories.
The money has to have come out of your own bank account, using an ATM card or a debit card with a PIN. Cash advances on a credit card do not count, and neither do gift cards or prepaid cards. Fees your bank refunded in full do not count either, and some accounts refund them automatically each month, so it is worth checking yours.
The claim form asks three questions: whether you paid an unreimbursed fee at an independent ATM in that period, whether any of those withdrawals were made with an ATM or debit card, and roughly how many times you paid one of these fees. You do not need receipts or bank statements to file.
You sign the form to say your answers are true, under penalty of perjury, which is what a claim form means by an attestation. The administrator can ask for bank statements to back a claim. A false or inflated claim can be cut back or thrown out, and large-scale false filing can be prosecuted. Claim the number you are confident in: a smaller, accurate claim gets paid.
Visa & Mastercard ATM Fee Class Action Claim Form
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FAQ
Independent ATMs sit in convenience stores, gas stations, bars, casinos, hotels and airports. Before it charges you, the screen usually names the company that runs the machine rather than a bank. A machine inside or beside a bank branch almost always belongs to that bank, and does not count here.
They show which payment networks your card can use, such as Visa, Plus, Star, Pulse or Accel. The lawsuit says ATMs would have charged less for withdrawals on the cheaper networks if Visa and Mastercard’s rules had let them. Your card does not need any particular logo to qualify: what counts is that you paid the fee.
Each valid claim gets a share of about $114 million, sized by the number of fees it reports. If as many valid claims come in as in the Mackmin settlement, the average works out near $380. That is an estimate, and every share moves with the final claim count.
Think about how often you used ATMs outside your bank. Twice a month for ten years comes to about 240. Old bank statements list ATM fees if you want to check. The form accepts up to four digits and is signed under penalty of perjury, so claim the number you are confident in.
The Mackmin settlement received roughly 63.5 million claims and approved 296,877; the administrator rejected the rest, overwhelmingly as fraudulent. The same administrator runs this settlement, so expect the same scrutiny. An honest, accurate estimate is what gets through it.
Yes. The earlier Mackmin settlements, $67 million from three banks and $197.5 million from Visa and Mastercard, covered fees at ATMs run by banks. This one covers independent ATMs, so a payment from those does not stop you claiming for independent ATM fees here.
Yes. Opting out of the earlier settlements with Bank of America, Chase, Wells Fargo, Visa or Mastercard does not carry over to this one. You are included unless you send a new request to be excluded from this settlement by December 11, 2026.
Up to 30% of the $167.5 million fund, plus their costs. Class counsel told the court they had not been paid anything for their work on the case, which began in 2011. The judge decides what is actually awarded, and it comes out of the fund before claims are paid.
Claims must be filed by February 8, 2027, and the court holds its final approval hearing on February 17, 2027. The administrator expects eligible payments within about six months of approval if there is no appeal. An appeal can add many months, and nobody can predict one.
You can. The form wants an honest count of fees going back to 2007, a signature under penalty of perjury, and a working email and mobile number, all before the deadline. Plenty of people mean to and never get to it. Filing is included in a Chimo membership.
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