An American court on Tuesday preliminarily approved a revised settlement between card networks Visa $V and Mastercard $MA and merchants worth $38 billion. It marks the end of a dispute that has been ongoing since 2005 — merchants accused both networks and banks of colluding to impose unreasonably high payment processing fees, the so‑called swipe fees (interchange). The judge in Brooklyn called the agreement “fair and reasonable” and indicated that final approval will likely follow — and that comes just under two years after another judge rejected a previous $30 billion proposal as too low. The agreement includes a 0.1 percentage point reduction in interchange for five years, a 1.25% cap for eight years, broader ability for merchants to charge surcharges to customers, and, most importantly, the end of the “Honor All Cards” rule, which forced them to accept either all Visa/Mastercard cards or none.