A $167.5 million settlement is now accepting claims from anyone who paid a surcharge to pull cash from an independent, nonbank ATM at any point between October 24, 2007, and August 14, 2026 — a class period spanning nearly two decades of routine withdrawals. Visa and Mastercard agreed to fund the payout after a federal antitrust lawsuit accused the two networks of rules that kept those surcharges artificially high. No receipts are required to file, but the settlement itself has not yet received final approval from the court that has to sign off on it.
What the Lawsuit Against Visa and Mastercard Argued
The case, known as Burke v. Visa Inc., No. 1:11-cv-01882 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, claimed Visa and Mastercard violated antitrust law through operating rules that barred independent ATM operators from varying the surcharge they charged based on which network processed the transaction. Cardholders, the suit argued, ended up paying higher access fees than they would have under real price competition among machine operators. Two related cases, Mackmin v. Visa and National ATM Council v. Visa, proceeded on parallel tracks in the same court over the same underlying conduct.
Visa and Mastercard have denied any wrongdoing throughout the litigation and are not admitting liability by settling. The dispute centered narrowly on ATM access-fee competition rather than the card-present interchange fees merchants pay when a customer swipes a card at checkout, a separate and much larger fight between retailers and the card networks that has run in the same courthouse for years.
Under the deal, Visa will contribute $88,775,000 and Mastercard will contribute $78,725,000, combining for the $167.5 million fund. After the court deducts attorneys’ fees, litigation costs, notice and administration expenses, and service awards for the named plaintiffs, whatever remains gets divided proportionally among everyone who files a valid claim.
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Who Qualifies and How to File Without Proof
The nationwide class covers anyone in the United States who was charged a surcharge or access fee withdrawing cash with an ATM or PIN-debit card at an independent, nonbank machine located anywhere in the country or its territories between October 24, 2007, and August 14, 2026, and who was not fully reimbursed by their own bank for that fee. Separate statewide classes exist for California, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Michigan, which may broaden eligibility for residents of those states under their own consumer-protection statutes.
Claims opened September 11, 2026, and can be filed online or by mail postmarked no later than February 10, 2027. Because the settlement relies on aggregated transaction and surcharge records rather than individual proof of purchase, claimants do not need to produce a receipt or bank statement to file — a rarity among class settlements, most of which require some documentation.
That no-proof structure comes with a tradeoff: the size of any individual payment will not be known until the claims window closes. The fund is split on a pro-rata basis according to the number of qualifying transactions each claimant reports, which means a widely filed settlement produces smaller individual checks than a lightly filed one, and neither side of that equation is visible until after February 10.
Class counsel intends to ask the court for fees of up to 30% of the fund, along with reimbursement of litigation costs and service awards of up to $17,500 for each named plaintiff — all of it subject to the judge’s approval rather than automatic.
Why the Deadline to File Comes Before the Court Even Approves It
The settlement remains formally “proposed,” meaning it has not yet cleared the final legal step required before any money moves. Class members who want to preserve their right to sue Visa and Mastercard separately must exclude themselves by December 11, 2026, and that same date is the deadline to file an objection to the deal’s terms.
The district court has scheduled a fairness hearing for February 17, 2027 — one week after the claims-filing deadline — to decide whether to approve the settlement, the requested attorneys’ fees, and the service awards. A claimant who files by February 10 is not guaranteed a payment on that date; the money moves only after the judge approves the deal and any appeals of that approval are resolved, a process that can add months even when no one objects.
The court-approved settlement site, NonbankATMSurchargeSettlement.com, hosts the claim form, the long-form notice, and the underlying settlement agreement, and is the reference point for anyone verifying the terms directly rather than through a secondhand summary. Class counsel’s own notice, distributed through a press release naming the case and filing deadlines, lists a dedicated phone line for questions rather than routing everything through email.
The underlying dispute reaches back further than most active class actions still taking claims. As one payments-industry account of the proposed deal put it, the case closes out litigation over ATM surcharge rules that has run for more than a decade, a reminder that antitrust cases involving routine consumer transactions can take years to reach the stage where an ordinary cardholder actually sees a claim form.
Inside the guide
A 5-tab Excel tracker pre-filled with all 51 state unclaimed-property offices, the source vault of 12 official places money sits, and a step-by-step filing walkthrough.
The Settlement & Refund Recovery System includes a 36-page guide, a 5-tab Excel tracker pre-filled with all 51 state unclaimed-property offices and the four-date rule for reading a settlement notice.
Open The Settlement & Refund Recovery System.
This article was researched and drafted with AI assistance and reviewed against primary sources before publication.
