A federal judge has granted U.S. merchants who processed Visa and Mastercard payments during a 15-year period additional time to seek their share of a $5.5 billion class-action settlement.

It was the second time this year that Judge Margo Brodie extended the deadline. This extension delays the former Aug. 30 claims filing deadline to Feb. 4, 2025.

Plaintiffs’ lawyers for the class of merchants wrote in court papers that the extension they requested would allow for the mailing of claim forms to additional potential claimants. 

Merchants can file claims online and the amount of money eligible businesses may each receive from the settlement could be as much as hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The merchant litigants in the class action are represented by attorneys from the law firms Robins Kaplan, Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd and Berger Montague.

Ryan Marth, a Robins Kaplan partner who is one of the co-lead counsel for the class of merchants, said the filing extension is good news for merchants as it “ensures that as many eligible merchants as possible can rightfully claim their share” of the settlement.

Meanwhile, a federal magistrate judge assigned to the case, Judge Joseph Marutollo, held an Aug. 13 hearing in which he urged lawyers for the class to ensure they efficiently and properly address any concerns raised by merchants and their representatives about the claims submission process.

The $5.5 billion settlement partially resolved a long-running antitrust case in which the two credit card network giants were alleged to have overcharged merchants by exacting excessive interchange fees, often known as swipe fees.

The class of merchants includes any U.S. businesses that accepted Visa and/or Mastercard credit or debit cards between Jan. 1, 2004, and Jan. 25, 2019.

Visa and Mastercard didn’t admit to any wrongdoing in the case, which only pertained to civil matters.

More claimants?

Starting in late 2023, class-action claim forms were sent to about 18.6 million merchants across the U.S. who processed Visa and Mastercard payments during the class period.

Lawyers for the class of merchants have worked closely with the official settlement administrator in the case, Epiq Systems, on the claims process.

In a document filed with class counsel’s recent request for the claims deadline extension, an Epiq official said the company had received additional data from “Visa and others” that revealed “a significant number of additional Class Members who did not receive claim forms sent in 2023.” 

“The Class Administrator recommends mailing Claim Forms to those Class Members after it concludes necessary analysis of the data at issue,” wrote Loree Kovach, a senior vice president for Epiq’s class action & claims solutions unit, in the court filing.

Marth declined to comment on the number of class members who did not receive claim forms last year and will now be sent them.

Marth also declined to provide the number of merchant claims filed to date but said “we can confirm claims are trending on pace with what counsel and the claims administrator expect.”

When seeking an extension of the original claims filing deadline of May 31, class counsel highlighted the thousands of claim conflicts that still needed to be resolved. 

A conflict occurs when multiple parties have filed claims for the same business, and Kovach told the court in May that there were more than 30,000 claim conflicts pending resolution.

Marth declined to comment on the number of conflicts that still need to be resolved.

Claims issues

The landmark $5.5 billion settlement is under the jurisdiction of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

During the Aug. 13 Zoom hearing, Marutollo highlighted that the court had received four letters in recent months raising concerns or questions about the claims administration process overseen by Epiq.

One letter to the court was from James Sammon, the general counsel of Jenne, a technology distributor that has filed a claim in the class action. 

In his letter, Sammon expressed concern that the numbers in the claims administrator’s portal “were woefully low for the amount and volume of credit card transactions undertaken by our company over the class period.” 

Marth told the court that he had been in touch with Sammon, and both class counsel and Epiq were working to address the company’s concerns.

Marutollo encouraged class counsel to “look into these issues as they arise and really ensure that these letters are not getting lost in the shuffle of the many other filings that are made in the months to come.”

Alexandra “Xan” Bernay, a partner at Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd and one of the co-lead counsel for the class, said class counsel and Epiq are working to address claims-related issues as quickly as possible.

“Class counsel takes this extremely seriously,” Bernay told the court. “We want this to be as easy of a process as possible for those class members.”