Visa and Mastercard Owe Small Businesses Money This September — Did You Check?

Visa and Mastercard Owe Small Businesses Money This September — Did You Check?

If your business accepted Visa or Mastercard at any point between 2004 and 2019, you may be owed money — and a new round of checks is expected to go out in September 2026. This comes from the massive $5.54 billion interchange fee antitrust settlement, one of the largest class-action settlements in U.S. history, and a lot of small business owners either forgot they filed a claim, assumed the payout was a one-time thing, or never realized they were eligible in the first place.

What the Settlement Is, in Plain English

For more than a decade, merchants who accepted Visa and Mastercard argued in federal court that the card networks and issuing banks illegally fixed the "interchange fees" — the cut merchants pay every time a customer swipes or taps a card — at artificially high levels. The case covered transactions from January 1, 2004, through January 25, 2019. Visa and Mastercard settled rather than continue litigating, agreeing to a $5.54 billion fund to be distributed to eligible businesses based on their share of the swipe fees they paid during that window.

Any business — a restaurant, a salon, a hardware store, an online shop — that took Visa or Mastercard payments at any point in that 15-year span was potentially eligible to file a claim. The window to file a new claim closed back on February 4, 2025, after being extended more than once. If you didn't file by then, you generally can't submit a new claim now. But if you did file — even if you don't remember doing so, because a bookkeeper or previous owner may have handled it — you're likely already in the payment pipeline.

Why September 2026 Matters

The settlement isn't being paid out in one lump sum. It's being distributed in waves as the court approves them. So far, roughly $414 million has been distributed to about 598,000 merchants. On May 26, 2026, class counsel filed a motion asking the court to approve a second initial distribution. The court granted that approval on June 15, 2026, and the payout — expected to be at least $182 million spread across roughly 84,000 claimants — is anticipated to go out in September 2026.

That means if you filed a claim, this is the moment to actually check on it rather than assume a check will show up automatically with no action on your part. Settlement distributions like this one can be paused or delayed by administrative issues on an individual claim — a wrong mailing address, an incomplete tax form, a business that changed ownership or banking details since 2019 — and those problems don't get fixed unless someone notices.

How to Check If You're Owed Money

• Go to the official settlement site. The court-authorized site is paymentcardsettlement.com. Avoid third-party sites that ask for payment to "process" your claim — the official settlement administrator does not charge merchants to check their status.
• Log in with your Claimant ID and Control Number. If you received a claim form in the mail, these numbers are printed near the bottom of it. If you can't find that paperwork, the site allows you to look up your claim using your business's Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN) instead.
• Confirm your payment details are current. If your business has changed its business bank account, mailing address, or ownership since you filed, update that information through the settlement portal so the September distribution isn't returned or delayed.
• Call if you're stuck. The settlement administrator can be reached at 1-800-625-6440 or by email if the online portal isn't turning up your claim.
• Check with whoever handled your books during 2004–2019. A surprising number of small business owners didn't personally file the claim — an accountant, bookkeeper, or a previous owner of the business did, sometimes years ago. If your business existed and took card payments during that window, it's worth asking around before assuming you're not in the system.

What to Do With the Money When It Arrives

Because these payments relate to fees your business paid years ago, they typically show up as unexpected income rather than something you budgeted for. A few practical notes:

• Settlement proceeds like this are generally treated as taxable income, so make sure your bookkeeper records it correctly on your profit and loss statement rather than letting it sit unreconciled in your bank account.
• If your business has changed structure since the fees were originally paid — for example, if it's been sold, dissolved, or converted from a sole proprietorship to an LLC — get clarity on which entity is legally entitled to the payout before you spend it.
• For businesses that paid heavy swipe fees over that 15-year window, especially high-volume retailers and restaurants, the payout can be a meaningful and genuinely unexpected cash infusion. It's worth a few minutes to make sure it actually reaches you.

The Bottom Line

Class-action settlements this size tend to fade from memory between the initial filing period and the actual payouts, which can stretch out over several years. If you ran a business anytime between 2004 and 2019 and took a Visa or Mastercard swipe, it costs nothing but a few minutes to check whether September's distribution includes you.

Photo by rupixen on Unsplash