Visa and Mastercard near settlement on interchange fees and card acceptance rules

Visa and Mastercard are nearing a settlement with merchants to reduce interchange fees and allow stores to refuse certain credit cards, potentially ending a 20-year legal dispute. The proposed deal would lower credit card interchange fees and relax rules requiring merchants to accept all cards from a network, allowing for category-based acceptance. This settlement addresses a 2005 lawsuit over anticompetitive practices, with previous attempts to resolve the issue having been rejected by the court.