A San Diego pizza restaurant has taken aim at two of the world’s biggest payment networks, accusing Visa and Mastercard of continuing to squeeze merchants with excessive “swipe fees” despite billions of dollars already paid to resolve earlier antitrust litigation.

The Pizza Standard filed a proposed class action Thursday in federal court in New York, alleging that Visa, Mastercard and some of the country’s largest banks have conspired to keep interchange and network fees artificially high in violation of federal antitrust laws.

The lawsuit paints a picture of a payment system in which every credit card transaction carries a toll — one that merchants have little choice but to pay.

“The scale of this ongoing scheme is staggering,” the restaurant said in the complaint, alleging that merchants now spend more than $100 billion each year accepting Visa and Mastercard credit cards. The fees, it claims, enrich the defendants while imposing costs on businesses.

Merchants Say the Fee Fight Is Far From Over

The Visa Mastercard Antitrust Suit arrives after more than two decades of litigation over the fees charged to merchants when customers pay with credit cards.

Those legal battles have already produced billions of dollars in settlements. One of the largest came in 2019, when a New York federal court approved a roughly $5 billion settlement stemming from sprawling multidistrict litigation involving merchant claims against Visa, Mastercard and their banking partners.

Other litigation has continued, including a proposed settlement that remains before the court. But The Pizza Standard argues that the existing cases leave a major gap: The claims and settlements do not extend beyond Jan. 25, 2019, according to the complaint.

“Even if approved,” the proposed class argues, the newer settlement would operate only going forward and would not compensate merchants for fees paid after that date.

Millions of Merchants Left Outside Earlier Settlements

The complaint says the cutoff matters because millions of businesses began accepting credit cards after Jan. 25, 2019.

Those merchants, according to the lawsuit, were not included in the earlier damages settlement and never agreed to release claims involving alleged anticompetitive conduct occurring after that date.

The restaurant therefore seeks to represent a class of businesses that paid Visa and Mastercard fees after the prior litigation’s cutoff.

Lawsuit Names Major Banks

The 84-count complaint does not stop with Visa and Mastercard. It also names several major financial institutions and payment-related companies, accusing them of participating in the alleged scheme.

The defendants include Bank of America, Capital One, Chase Bank, Citibank, Citigroup, JPMorgan, Paymentech and Wells Fargo.

The restaurant alleges violations of the federal Sherman Act and Clayton Act, along with antitrust laws across virtually every state.

At the heart of the case is an allegation that Visa and Mastercard worked with their member banks to establish rules that prevented meaningful competition and allowed the payment networks to impose fees on merchants whenever their cards were used.

How the Alleged Fee System Works

The lawsuit focuses on two categories of charges: interchange fees and network fees.

Interchange fees, commonly known as swipe fees, are paid by merchants when customers use credit cards to make purchases. Network fees, according to the complaint, include both transaction-based charges and fixed fees.

The Pizza Standard argues that the structure leaves merchants with little ability to negotiate because Visa and Mastercard control networks that businesses need if they want to accept cards used by millions of consumers.

The complaint compares the alleged conduct to a cartel, arguing that competing entities collectively established rules that effectively imposed a mandatory cost on each credit card transaction.

“What competitors may not do is agree to extract monopoly rents from customers,” the lawsuit alleges.

The restaurant claims Visa and Mastercard’s membership associations did precisely that when setting interchange fees, describing the resulting charges as a “deadweight toll” placed on credit card transactions.

A New Chapter in a Long-Running Battle

For merchants, the lawsuit represents another chapter in a legal fight that has stretched across decades. Previous settlements have produced billions of dollars, but The Pizza Standard contends those agreements did not resolve claims arising from fees imposed after January 2019.

The proposed class action now seeks to reopen that battlefield, focusing on businesses that allegedly continued paying the fees without receiving compensation from earlier settlements.

The restaurant is represented by Christopher Bateman and Daniel Gifford of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll LLP.

Counsel information for Visa, Mastercard and the other defendants was not immediately available.

The allegations in the complaint have not been proven in court, and the defendants will have an opportunity to respond to the claims.