A US federal judge granted preliminary approval on June 9, 2026 to the long-running settlement between Visa, Mastercard and roughly 12 million merchants. If it survives final approval, the headline for restaurants isn't the interchange cut. It's that the surcharge cap drops to 1%.
What the settlement does
- Trims credit interchange rates by 10 basis points for five years.
- Caps standard consumer credit cards at 1.25% for eight years.
- Ends the "honor all cards" rule, so a merchant can decline some higher-cost premium and commercial credit cards while still accepting the network's standard cards.
- Gives merchants new rights to surcharge and to discount as a way of steering customers toward lower-cost cards.
For scale: merchants paid a weighted average of 2.35% on Visa and Mastercard transactions in 2024, according to the Nilson Report. A 10 basis point trim against that number is not the story.
The surcharge cap is the story
Mastercard currently caps merchant surcharges at 4% and Visa at 3%. Under the settlement the cap on Visa and Mastercard credit cards would fall to 1%, regardless of what a merchant charges on other networks.
A 1% ceiling ends surcharging as a fee-elimination strategy in the United States. If your processing costs 2.6% and you can only pass on 1%, the maths no longer works. Any US program built on surcharging would need rebuilding.
What this does not touch
A discount is not a surcharge, and the cap does not apply to one. A surcharge adds an amount on top of a posted price. A discount posts one price and reduces it for a chosen payment method. The two are treated differently in the card network rules, in state law, and in Canada's Code of Conduct.
That distinction has always mattered. If this settlement is finalised, it starts mattering a great deal more, because the compliant ceiling on one approach drops by two thirds while the other is unaffected.
Two things to hold lightly
This is preliminary, not final. The National Retail Federation said the deal offers no meaningful relief and leaves the underlying system intact, and it intends to keep fighting in the next phase. A contested final approval, a renegotiation, or a return toward trial are all still live.
This is United States only. Canadian surcharging runs on a separate settlement with its own cap, and Interac debit cannot be surcharged at all. Nothing here changes what a Canadian restaurant may do.
What we'd suggest doing
If you're a Florida operator running a surcharge program, work out now what it looks like at a 1% ceiling, before the answer is urgent. If you're running a discount program, nothing changes, but it's worth confirming your point-of-sale display and receipt wording describe it as a discount, because that distinction is about to carry more weight than it did.
Either way, start from your real number. Our guide on finding your effective rate takes about ten minutes and one statement.
Know your number before anything changes.
Send us one recent processing statement and we'll return your true effective rate, broken out for credit and debit, within one business day. No cost, no obligation. If you're already in a good deal, we'll tell you that too.
Get your free statement audit