Important Update April 28, 2026: The Court held a Fairness Hearing on April 27, 2026. On April 28, 2026, the Court issued an Order granting Final Approval of these Settlements and an Order granting Class Counsel’s request for attorneys’ fees and expenses, as well as Service Awards for Class Representatives. You can review these Orders on the Documents page.
Please note: There will be no payments to the Class at this time and no action from Class Members is needed. Class Members will be notified later of an opportunity to file a Claim Form. Class Members who previously received a notice about this Settlement via email or USPS mail will be sent a Claim Form automatically once the claim filing period begins. The Claim Form and other relevant updates will be posted on this website as they become available.
Settlements have been reached in a class action lawsuit called B & R Supermarket, Inc., et al. v. Visa, Inc., et al., Case No. 1:17-cv-02738-BMC-JAM (E.D.N.Y.). The lawsuit alleges Defendants violated antitrust laws by entering into a conspiracy to adopt the same policy via nearly identical rules for shifting billions of dollars in liability for fraudulent charges, or "chargebacks," from banks to merchants ("Fraud Liability Shift" or "FLS") when a credit card was enabled with EMV/chip technology and the merchant's terminal was not enabled for EMV/chip technology and made the liability shift effective on the same day and in the same manner for all four networks. Defendants deny the legal claims and deny any wrongdoing or liability. The Court has not decided who is right.
Mastercard International, Incorporated ("Mastercard"), Visa, Inc., and Visa U.S.A., Inc. (together, "Visa"), Discover Financial Services ("Discover"), and American Express Company ("Amex") (collectively, "Defendants") have each reached settlements (the "Settlements") totaling a combined $231.7 million ("Gross Settlement Fund"). There will be no payments to the Class at this time. Class Members will be notified later of an opportunity to file a Claim Form.
The Class includes: All merchants who incurred one or more unreimbursed chargeback(s) between October 1, 2015, through and including September 30, 2017, pursuant to the Fraud Liability Shift for the assessment of Mastercard, Visa, Discover and/or Amex payment card chargebacks, who did not exclude themselves from the Class.
You may have seen a previous notice regarding the Court's order certifying this Class. There was a deadline of August 31, 2022 to exclude yourself from the class. If you asked to be excluded from the Class, and complied with the requirements that were set out in the notice of class certification, you are no longer part of the class, will not be entitled to anything in connection with the settlements, and do not need to do anything further in relation to this action. If you were a member of the Class, and did not seek to exclude yourself, there will be no additional opportunity to exclude yourself from the litigation.