Court Orders Visa, MasterCard to Refund Louisiana ATM Fees

If you used your Visa or Mastercard credit card to access cash from an ATM in Ville Platte, Ponchatula, Metairie, Cossinade, or any other community in Louisiana since October of 2007 and were assessed a fee to gain access to your money you could be getting at least some of that money back. 

You're familiar with ATM fees. It's that screen that pops up on the ATM just before it is about to dispense the cash that lets you know that you are being nickeled and dimed to death by a 541 billion dollar and $412 billion dollar company respectively. I guess that's how you increase your company's worth, you charge fees to customers who really have no choice in the matter.

More Than 175 Million Americans Could Be Eligible

According to reports both Visa and Mastercard have agreed to pay millions of dollars in order to settle a class action lawsuit that was brought against them. Visa has agreed to pay $104.6 million and Mastercard has agreed to pay $92.8 million as part of a settlement in the case. Neither company admitted any wrongdoing and the final approval of the deal is subject to court approval.

The class action lawsuit brought against the two major credit card companies suggested that both Visa and Mastercard operated their businesses in such a way that fees for accessing money through an authorized ATM were kept artificially high.

If You Used Your Credit Card at an ATM and Were Charged a Fee, Read On

The litigants suggested in court documents that the practice had been ongoing since October 2007. Should the court approve the settlement, some 100 million notices will be sent out to Visa and Mastercard customers explaining the intricacies of the settlement and how to recoup monies owed.

There has been no information on how much an "average payment" might be, but after the court approves the settlement, assuming that will happen, there will be notices published online and in other places informing consumers of what steps they might need to take.

This class action suit comes on the heels of another settlement with Visa and Mastercard regarding anti-trust laws surrounding fees that merchants were charged for processing payments. That settlement was over $5.5 billion and some 18.6 million merchants were affected. Many of those merchants do business in Louisiana.

If you were a business affected by credit card fees on the merchant level from Visa and or Mastercard you might have reimbursement or at least some remittance coming your way as well. You can find out more about that settlement here.