Visa and Mastercard are close to reaching agreements with merchants to reward credit cards that may be rejected.

According to informed sources, Visa and MasterCard are about to reach a settlement with merchants, aimed at lowering the fees for merchants' payments and giving them more power to reject certain credit cards, thus ending a 20-year legal dispute. These sources say that, under the terms being discussed, Visa and MasterCard will gradually reduce the credit card interchange fees, typically between 2% and 2.5%, by an average of about 0.1 percentage point over the next few years. The two companies will also relax acceptance rules, which currently require merchants accepting one credit card from a certain payment network to accept all credit cards from that network. Sources say that an agreement could be announced soon and would need court approval to take effect. If the agreement is finalized, consumers may see significant changes at the checkout counter. For example, merchants accepting a certain Visa credit card will not be required to accept all Visa credit cards. According to informed sources, under the current negotiations, credit card acceptance will be divided into categories, including rewards credit cards, non-rewards credit cards, and commercial cards. Some stores may refuse to accept rewards cards, which charge merchants higher fees and have become very popular among consumers in recent years.