NACS is increasing its efforts to help the industry get meaningful changes to the broken credit card system through litigation. In November 2025, lawyers representing a class of merchants announced a proposed settlement of claims relating to Visa’s and Mastercard’s credit card system rules, the third proposed settlement by the credit card industry. NACS and many other groups filed extensive objections to that settlement in December 2025.

Overturning that class settlement is critical to merchants because no organization or company is currently allowed to opt-out of the ill-conceived settlement.

As part of NACS’ efforts, it is closing its own monetary claims in the case. Several dozen other companies and organizations joined a filing indicating that their individual monetary claims were ending.

“NACS’ goal has always been to use litigation as a way to correct antitrust law violations by the credit card industry,” said NACS General Counsel Doug Kantor. “With the threat of a mandatory class action being rammed down our throats, the best way to try to stop those antitrust problems is for NACS to focus all of our litigation efforts on denying approval of this bad deal and pushing for a better one. The court needs to see that our industry will not allow the credit card giants to keep abusing Main Street.”

NACS has led litigation efforts since filing its claims for monetary and injunctive relief against the credit card industry in 2005. In 2012, NACS successfully led the opposition to the first effort by the credit card industry to stop the lawsuits with a mandatory settlement that would have cut off the rights of every American business accepting credit cards to make changes to the credit card system through the courts.

In 2024, NACS led another successful fight against the second attempt by the credit card industry to cut off businesses’ rights without their consent when the federal district court hearing the case threw out the proposed settlement before granting even preliminary approval.

Now, NACS is leading the fight against a third attempt to cut off business’ rights without their consent.

Separately, individual monetary claims in the case by the class and many individual plaintiffs were settled on a confidential basis over the years. NACS joined that group with its filing in order to focus its current efforts on overturning the third attempt at an involuntary settlement.

“Businesses need the right to press for real change,” said Kantor. “No one else should be able to force them to put up with unjust, anticompetitive conduct by the credit card companies. We will do everything we can to make sure that does not happen.”

Swipe fee reform will be a focus of NACS Day on the Hill, March 17-18 in Washington, DC, in which NACS retailer—and supplier—members get in-depth knowledge of critical industry issues and then meet with their elected leaders. NACS provides the resources, builds out teams and schedules the meetings to ensure that Hill visits are productive for first-timers and regular attendees alike. Click here to learn more.