Who is affected by this?
Business owners and merchants who have accepted Visa and MasterCard payments in the period between January 1, 2004 and November 28, 2012 of a material nature and want to recover a cash settlement for their overcharges.
The final court hearing was completed in September 2013 and the procedures to file will be published very shortly.
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Since you have to properly register to get your money, if you fail to do so, you will receive absolutely nothing and your apportionment will go into the pot to be divvied up by other claimants! So, stay abreast of this.
Find out what's happening in Stonington-Mysticfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
What Is The Total Settlement?
A New York Court has mediated a settlement amounting to $6.05 Billion that will dispersed by proportionally by Interchange fees paid by merchants.
A class action suit was brought by merchants against Visa, MasterCard, and several large issuing banks as their Interchange pricing tactics were deemed to be antitrust in nature.
The total package is $7.25 billion. In an effort to put the litigation behind them, the payment networks and banks reached an agreement to pay both $6.05 billion to merchants and temporarily reduce swipe fees by an amount equal to $1.2 billion.
How much could a company get?
The amount each merchant may receive is not yet totally known, as the fund is impacted by the number of merchants who opted out of the settlement and will settle directly with Visa and MasterCard.
Even with this sizable set aside for large “opt out” merchants and attorney fees, there is still a huge fund remaining and unless merchants act, they will lose out on the opportunity, so every merchant who does not register, results in a greater amount for those who do.
Even with these variables, the early conventional wisdom indicates that it is in the area of 20% to 30% of Interchange fees paid during the defined period.
A back of the envelop calculation is to average what you did for Visa and MasterCard transactions during the 2004 -2012 period and multiply that by 2% which is a near approximation of Interchange, then your settlement will be conservatively be about 20% of that.
For example, a $1 million in Visa and MasterCard processing times 2% would indicate $20K paid in Interchange and that times 20% would equal $4,000 due. Over the entire 9 year period, you could receive $36K of found money, sweet.
How to Process a Claim:
It will be incumbent upon the merchant to file properly and provide all the sufficient evidence that they did process with Visa and MasterCard (not American Express as part of this litigation).
There will soon be an online mechanism to submit a claim.
Since the settlement amount “default” will be via estimates provided by Visa, the named defendant, it may behoove merchants to provide their own estimates of their processing volumes during that period.
However, if a merchant wants to file an accurate and timely claim supported by actual historical sales and fee volume, it can be a tedious and complex process. Many merchants had various Merchant IDs and probably used multiple card processing companies over the time period in question, thus making it very difficult, if not impossible, to consolidate and collect accurate data to get all the monies they deserve.
Using an Expert Recovery Firm:
For many small business owners, strapped of accounting staff, it may be a daunting task to recover all the proof of transactions to get their entitled money. At ACI Merchant Systems, we have partnered with our professional recovery firm that is expert in the proper filing of this legal action.
Our claims will be filed using actual historical financial data. Since using real data is the only proven method that is valid and effective for increasing recoveries.
We maintain an intricate knowledge of the Settlement documents and the claims filing process required to maximize clients’ cash returns. We use actual merchant data when negotiating a claim and not just accepting the Settlement Administrator’s estimate. The ultimate goal is to maximize our client’s cash return from these settlement funds.
This settlement recovery service is performed on a contingent fee basis – if there is no recovery, there will be no fee.
Need Help?
Feel free to contact me via email. When available, I will forward you the website URL to process your claim directly. Or, if you would like to know more about our professional recovery services, I can forward you info on such.
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