If you’ve ever pulled forty dollars out of a machine in a corner store, a bar, or a gas station and paid a fee for the privilege, you’re in a class action. The claim form is live. It asks for one number and no receipts.
File it. The deadline is February 10, 2027, and you will forget by then.
What the case is about
The lawsuit is Burke v. Visa Inc., No. 1:11-cv-01882, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, in front of Judge Richard J. Leon. It was filed in 2011. Read that year again.
The fee itself was set by whoever owned the machine, not by Visa or Mastercard. The fight was over the rules sitting behind it. Plaintiffs alleged the two networks stopped independent ATM operators from charging a lower access fee when the same withdrawal could have gone over a cheaper network. Take away an operator’s ability to discount and you take away the reason to compete on price.
Fifteen years later, the two networks have agreed to pay $167,500,000 into a settlement fund, Visa $88,775,000 and Mastercard $78,725,000. Neither admits any liability.
Are you in it?
You’re a class member if a surcharge was charged to you, and your bank didn’t fully reimburse it, for a domestic cash withdrawal at an independent ATM between October 24, 2007 and August 14, 2026, using an ATM or pin-debit card. Independent means a machine not owned by Visa, Mastercard, or any bank or other financial institution. The one bolted to a convenience store wall counts. Your own bank’s lobby doesn’t.
Credit card cash advances don’t count. Prepaid cards don’t count.
That’s nearly nineteen years of vacation cash, bar cash, farmers-market cash, and every twenty bucks you ever pulled at a rest stop.
What you get, honestly
Nobody knows, and the notice doesn’t pretend otherwise. Payments are pro rata, which means the fund gets divided according to how many qualifying transactions get claimed. The official language: “Because the amount of each payment depends on the number of approved transactions, nobody can know in advance how much the payment will be.”
That’s the actual argument for filing. The pot is fixed. Your slice depends on how few people bother.
Do this now
Go to nonbankatmsurchargesettlement.com and open the claim form. One field decides your payout, and it asks you to estimate the number of times between October 24, 2007 and August 14, 2026 that you paid an unreimbursed surcharge at an independent ATM.
Estimate it honestly. The form says you don’t need documentation now, then says the administrator may come back and ask for proof. A signed claim is a sworn statement, so put down a number you could stand behind.
Give a live email address. Payments go out digitally, with a paper check available if you ask later.
Two other dates worth knowing. December 11, 2026 is the deadline to opt out or to object, which only matters if you’d rather sue on your own. February 17, 2027 is the final approval hearing. No money moves before then, so don’t watch the mailbox in November.
Then stop feeding the machines
The settlement is a refund on a habit worth breaking. A non-bank ATM usually charges you twice: the operator’s surcharge at the machine, and your own bank’s out-of-network fee on the back end. Ask for cash back at a grocery register instead, and check whether your bank sits in a surcharge-free network before you travel.
If it charges you either way, look at what a checking and savings setup should cost and which accounts skip the fees. Getting to your own money should be free.
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