A fee of $3 or $4 shows up on the screen when you use an ATM that is not in your network. Most people don’t think twice about it. You click “Accept,” take the money, and leave. It seems small. Everyday. But over millions of transactions and more than a decade of court cases, those small fees added up to something that federal courts thought was important to take seriously. In fact, Visa and Mastercard just agreed to pay $197.5 million to settle antitrust claims that have been going on since 2011.
Even though the legal battle was hard, the main accusation was never very complicated. Plaintiffs said that Visa and Mastercard made agreements with U.S. banks that made it illegal for ATM owners to charge less than what the card networks did. That is, competition was pretty much taken out of the picture. If you used your debit card at an ATM in a different country, the network decided how much you would pay, not what the market might have chosen. The lawsuit, which was first filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., was called Mackmin v. Visa Inc., and it said that the defendants broke federal antitrust laws in a way that cost consumers for years without anyone knowing.
The length of the case makes it seem different from other disputes about small print in financial documents. The lawsuit was filed in 2011 and went through being thrown out, being overturned on appeal, battles over class certification, and a trip to the D.C. Circuit twice and twice tried to get the Supreme Court to step in, but both times they failed. At almost every step of the way, Visa and Mastercard worked hard to kill it. When the Supreme Court finally turned down an appeal in April 2024, it pretty much made a settlement possible. A federal judge gave the final OK in June 2025. The total amount of money recovered from all defendants was about $264 million. This includes a settlement with Bank of America, Chase, and Wells Fargo worth $66.7 million.
Take a moment to think about that number. For the Visa-MasterCard settlement, the claims period is over, which means that most people who might have been eligible either filed or didn’t. A common problem with class actions is that the window is already closing by the time the news gets to most people. Still, what happens in court is important beyond the payout. This kind of antitrust pressure changes how businesses act in ways that don’t always show up in a press release.
Another case, which is smaller and more recent, is still taking claims. Bank of America agreed to pay $2.25 million to settle claims that it charged some customers twice for checking their balances at FCTI-owned ATMs in 7-Eleven stores from May 2018 to November 2021. The amounts are small, and the exact amount each person gets will depend on how many valid claims are received by July 29, 2026. People who used to have Bank of America accounts must file through the settlement website. Customers who already have an account and got a notice don’t need to do anything; the payment should go through automatically. On August 21, 2026, there will be a final approval hearing.
When you think about it, the 7-Eleven ATM angle is kind of funny. A very American story is the idea that someone who stopped for a slurpee and a quick cash withdrawal became part of a federal class action. Most people probably didn’t even notice because the amounts were so small. That’s how these things usually work: the harm to an individual is small, but the harm to the group is big.
The real point of the ATM class action is to show how antitrust laws in financial services are enforced very slowly. It’s common for technology to change, banks to change how they charge fees, and most people to use contactless payments by the time this case is over. In the end, the legal system caught up. How comforting or annoying that is likely depends on how many times you were charged at an ATM that wasn’t in your network between 2007 and now.
