A settlement notice is now circulating for anyone who paid a fee at an ATM that a bank did not own, covering transactions as far back as October 2007. Visa and Mastercard have agreed to pay $167.5 million to resolve a class action over the rules that govern those machines, with Visa contributing $88.775 million and Mastercard $78.725 million. The case is Burke v. Visa Inc., filed in the federal district court in Washington, D.C. in 2011, and the proposed class period ends August 14, 2026. The money is real and the deadline is enforceable, but the notice describes a payment for something narrower than "ATM fees," and the difference is where the interesting part of the case sits.
The fee at a non-bank ATM was never the machine's to set
The theory of the case was not that independent ATM operators charged too much. It was that they were not permitted to charge less. Under the network rules at issue, an operator of a machine that accepted Visa and Mastercard could not vary its access fee based on which network carried the transaction, which meant a machine owner could not pass along the savings when a cheaper network could process the withdrawal. The plaintiffs described that arrangement as a price-fixing scheme that left cardholders paying more at non-bank ATMs than a competitive market would have produced. Visa and Mastercard deny the allegations and settled without admitting wrongdoing.
That distinction matters for reading the notice correctly. If you paid $3 at a convenience store ATM in 2014, the settlement does not claim that $3 was unlawful in itself. It claims the fee would have been lower if the machine's owner had been free to compete on the network's cost, and it prices nineteen years of that difference at $167.5 million. The surcharge a reader remembers paying is the visible part. The rule that fixed its floor is the part the case was about.
Two fees sit inside a single cash withdrawal, and the case turns on the one nobody sees. The surcharge is the amount the machine's owner adds on top of the withdrawal and displays on screen, and that money belongs to the operator. The other fee moves between the banks and the network that route the transaction, and it never appears on a receipt. An independent operator pays it when a withdrawal is processed through a network it does not prefer, and the rules at issue limited how the operator could steer volume toward a cheaper one. The plaintiffs argued that the arrangement let the networks collect more than a competitive market would have produced, and that the cost landed on the surcharge the customer paid. The class is defined by the surcharge because that is the only fee a cardholder can document, but the mechanism the case attacked lives in the fee the cardholder never sees.
A fifteen-year case that closes a nineteen-year class period
The gap between the filing date and the settlement explains the length of the class period. The complaint dates to 2011, the class period reaches back to October 2007, and the parties spent years on certification before reaching a proposed resolution that the notice describes. Fifteen years of litigation produced a fund that covers nineteen years of transactions, which is an unusually wide window for a consumer case and a reminder of how slowly antitrust claims against payment networks move.
The companies continue to deny that the rules were unlawful, and the settlement is a compromise rather than a finding. A judge still has to grant final approval, and the hearing for that is scheduled for February 17, 2027. Until then the settlement is a proposal with a claims process attached, not a completed transfer of money.
The duration is typical of the genre rather than a sign that something went wrong. Antitrust class actions against payment networks spend years in certification fights, because the plaintiffs have to show that a class of millions of cardholders shares a common injury and that a formula can compute each one's share. Expert economic testimony is fought over in both directions, and rulings on class certification are often appealed before the merits are touched. The cases that eventually settle usually do so after the appellate picture settles, not before. A fund that covers nineteen years reflects a case that was filed early in the period it describes and litigated through the whole of it.
Pro rata means the fund divides by however many people file
The settlement fund is capped and the distribution is pro rata, which means each valid claim receives a share of the total based on how many qualifying transactions it reports, after the fund pays attorneys' fees, administrative costs and service awards. Attorneys' fees are capped at 30 percent of the fund, which would be roughly $50 million if the full amount is awarded. There is no per-person figure, and the notice says so plainly.
That structure is worth understanding before filing. A capped fund divided among an unknown number of claims produces a payout that shrinks as more people participate. The class period is nineteen years long and the eligibility rules are broad, which means the claimant pool could be large. Whatever the total turns out to be, nobody can calculate it in advance from the fund's size alone, and any figure circulating on social media that presents a per-person amount is a guess.
Eligibility has specific edges. The transaction must have been a cash withdrawal from a deposit account using an ATM or PIN-debit card at an independent machine, meaning one not owned by a bank or financial institution, and the surcharge or access fee must not have been fully reimbursed by the cardholder's bank. Credit card cash advances and prepaid card transactions generally do not qualify. There are separate statewide classes for California, Illinois, Massachusetts and Michigan that run alongside the nationwide settlement, and a claimant in those states may be covered by both.
The claims form asks for a signature, and the paperwork comes later
The filing process is lighter than the class period suggests. A claim requires a sworn certification at the time of filing rather than receipts, and the administrator may request bank statements or documentation later. Claims can be filed by mail or online through the administrator, A.B. Data, and payment options include PayPal, a virtual debit card or a paper check once the settlement is final and any appeals are resolved.
The sworn certification is the part that carries weight. A claim form filed under penalty of perjury is a statement that the transactions happened, and administrators audit a sample of claims against bank records before paying. That design is what makes a receipt-free process workable in a case with a nineteen-year class period, because almost nobody keeps a 2014 ATM receipt. It also means a claim filed on a guess about how often you used a non-bank machine is a statement you are signing, and the administrator's audit, not the fund's size, is what determines whether a claim is paid.
The dates are the part to write down. Claims are due February 10, 2027. Anyone who wants to exclude themselves from the class or object to the terms has to act by December 11, 2026. Excluding yourself preserves the right to sue separately over the same conduct and forfeits the settlement share, a trade that only makes sense for someone with an individual claim large enough to pursue on their own. Objections go to the court and do not remove a class member from the fund.
The rule itself is being argued in a different courtroom
The settlement resolves the consumer claims. It does not change the network rules, because a settlement pays for past conduct rather than rewriting the terms going forward. The case that goes at the rules directly belongs to the operators. The National ATM Council, a trade group for independent machine owners, has its own suit against the networks, and that one is still pending. If the rules eventually change, the change will come from there or from regulators rather than from this fund.
That leaves the pricing arrangement exactly where it was, and it explains why the settlement is best read as compensation rather than reform. Consumers who file will be paid for fees they already paid. The next fee they pay will be set by the same rules, minus whatever the operator case eventually produces.
The fund sits in a longer chain of ATM litigation
This case also has relatives. A related class covering bank-operated ATMs settled for $197.5 million in the case known as Mackmin v. Visa, and several banks settled related claims for $66 million in 2021. Between them, the last five years have produced a series of payments across the ATM chain, each covering a slice of the same underlying question about how withdrawal fees are set when the machine, the network and the bank all take a cut.
The pattern is a familiar one for payment networks. Litigation against card networks tends to resolve in layers, with each settlement closing one set of claims while leaving the underlying rules in place until a regulatory or trade case changes them. Readers who want the full picture can find coverage of the settlement terms elsewhere, including the eligibility walkthroughs that the claims administrator's notice also carries.
The practical calculation for a reader is simple enough. Filing takes a few minutes, costs nothing, and produces an uncertain but real share of a capped fund. The judgment that takes longer concerns what the settlement means. A nineteen-year class period that ends with a fund this size says something about how durable the pricing arrangement was: it survived more than a decade of litigation, and the resolution leaves it in place. The claims deadline of February 10, 2027 is roughly five months out, and the fund will not be distributed until after the final approval hearing and the resolution of any appeals, which the notice estimates at about six months past approval. The earliest plausible payments land in the second half of 2027, in amounts the pro rata math will decide once the claims period closes.
Primary sources
- Settlement notice and claims information, Finkelstein Thompson LLP and Lovell Stewart Halebian Jacobson LLP, announced September 10, 2026.
- Burke v. Visa Inc., No. 1:11-cv-01882, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, docket and motion for preliminary approval.
- Visa and Mastercard settlement reporting, Nasdaq and CNBC Select, September 2026.