LONDON (Reuters) – Mastercard (NYSE:) has reached an agreement in principle to resolve a class action lawsuit in London brought on behalf of British consumers over card fees, it said on Tuesday.
The global payment processor was facing a lawsuit filed by consumer advocate Walter Merricks on behalf of approximately 46 million adults in the United States. Kingdom (TADAWUL:).
The case became the first mass consumer action approved in the UK in 2021 after a nearly five-year journey from the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) to the UK Supreme Court and back again.
Mastercard said that, during the latest round of the case at the CAT on Tuesday, it was announced that the company and Merricks – as representative of the plaintiff class – had reached an agreement to resolve the case, subject to court approval.
The CAT said in its most recent ruling in October that the total value of the claim, according to the plaintiffs' lawyers, was about 10 billion pounds ($12.7 billion).
A person familiar with the deal, however, said the deal figure was around £200m.
“We are pleased to have reached an agreement in principle to put this case behind us,” a Mastercard spokesperson said in a statement.
Merricks said in a statement: “I am very pleased that after almost nine years of litigation with Mastercard, we have reached a settlement that I believe will provide significant compensation to class members who choose to come forward to participate in the distribution of damages. ”
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s){if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′;n.queue=();t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)(0);s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,’script’,’https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js’);
