Payments News Update – November 21, 2025
Legal and Regulatory Developments
SPOTLIGHT:
Digital Transactions News – November 14, 2025
As the dust settles around the latest settlement agreement in Visa Inc.’s and Mastercard Inc.’s long running legal battle with merchants over card-acceptance fees, how the offer will impact the payments industry is coming into focus.
Early reaction to the agreement from payments experts is that interchange relief will be uneven for merchants, while the provision to allow merchants to levy surcharges of up to 3% on card transactions will make surcharging more widespread.
Merchants with large card volumes are expected to be the primary beneficiaries of interchange reductions, while merchants with lower card volumes won’t see much relief. Under the agreement, the card networks are offering a 10-basis point interchange reduction over five years and a rate cap for standard consumer credit cards at 125 basis points for at least 8 years. . . .
PYMNTS – November 17, 2025
Senator Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) said Monday (Nov. 17) that the proposed settlement in the 20-year Visa and Mastercard “swipe fees” legal battle “falls short” of providing a true solution to “outrageous swipe fees” on credit card transactions.
Durbin is the Senate Democratic whip, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the lead sponsor of the Credit Card Competition Act.
“Reducing the cost of swipe fees and allowing merchants more choice in which cards they accept should be welcome news, however, I believe this settlement falls short,” Durbin said in a Monday press release. “This deal provides only temporary concessions and the ability for Visa and Mastercard to change the rules as they go.” . . .
Digital Transactions News – November 17, 2025
A lawsuit filed in March 2016 over how the four U.S. card brands handled the liability shift during the EMV migration more than 10 years ago, along with unreimbursed chargebacks associated with it, has reached its next step.
The suit is over unreimbursed liability-shift chargebacks made with a credit or debit card on the networks in the Oct. 1, 2015 through Sept. 30, 2017 time period. The court says it has not decided whether the defendants violated any laws.
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York announced Monday a $231.7 million settlement was reached Oct. 17 in the class action lawsuit B & R Supermarket, Inc., et al. v. Visa, Inc. et al., Case No. 1:17-cv-02738-BMC-JAM (E.D.N.Y.). . . .
Industry Developments
SPOTLIGHT:
CNBC – November 14, 2025
JPMorgan Chase, the biggest U.S. bank by assets, has secured deals ensuring it will get paid by the fintech firms responsible for nearly all the data requests made by third-party apps connected to customer bank accounts, CNBC has learned.
The agreements are with fintech middlemen including Plaid, Yodlee, Morningstar and Akoya, according to JPMorgan spokesman Drew Pusateri.
After weeks of negotiations between JPMorgan and the middlemen, the bank agreed to lower pricing than it originally proposed, and the fintech middlemen won concessions regarding the servicing of data requests, according to people with knowledge of the talks. . . .
American Banker – November 13, 2025 (subscription may be required)
Debit card rewards programs are back, and likely here to stay.
Airlines and hotel chains are taking advantage of the banking-as-a-service model and the pass small banks get on interchange fee caps to revitalize debit card rewards programs.
United Airlines and Southwest Airlines both in the last two weeks launched their own debit rewards program. Sunrise Banks, a $2.4 billion-asset bank based in St. Paul, Minnesota, serves as the issuing bank for both the Visa co-branded cards. Galileo, SoFi’s technology company, handles processing, fraud protection and program management. . . .