I don't see much at all changing.

EDIT: The Visa/MC settlement terms, if you're inclined to read several dozen pages of the finer details.

The four basis points minimum reduction for three years and keeping interchange at least 7 basis points below where we are now for five years... this is relative peanuts. Taking an example of services interchange on Visa Signature non-preferred:

Status quo: 1.85% + 10 cents
Year 1, settlement: 1.81% + 10 cents
Year 2: 1.77% + 10 cents
Year 3: 1.74% + 10 cents
Year 4: 1.78% + 10 cents (still 7 basis points below the settlement amount)
Year 5: 1.78% + 10 cents
Beyond that: could be 1.85% or higher again

EDIT 2: Per my next post, per reading the actual proposed settlement (instead of articles summarizing it), it's not 4 basis points minimum reduction per year for three year, it's three basis points total on the posted interchange for a period of three years, as a subset for reducing average interchange including fees and other assessments by 7 basis points minimum on average by network for five years.

On product level surcharging: This has been allowed by Mastercard since at least 2019, and Visa at least since 2022. It's an absolute nightmare to implement. How is your point of sale going to determine if someone is Visa Infinite Qualified (expected to spend $50K-$250K on the card) or non-qualified Visa Infinite? Same with Visa Signature Preferred (similar thresholds) vs. non- Preferred Visa signature. All of this forgets standard rewards and "all other". And are you going to post an Excel table printed on your 8.5x11" piece of paper with a chart by Visa and Mastercard product type and expect the person coming to your counter to know if their card is Mastercard World Elite or not?

Issuers do product changes without changing the account numbers to new BINs, and sometimes upgrade cardholders within a BIN (my Citi Double Cash was originally an AAviator Mastercard before PC, and was originally a regular mastercard before Citi changed it to a world elite.

In short - unless there's some genius technical solution that I'm not aware of like the issuer passing their interchange classification during card processing (which I have never, ever seen in practice, but who knows), product level surcharging is impossible even if the merchant is manually checking what's printed on the card.

(All of this ignores sometimes allowed stylistic changes - the Apple Card is a World Elite mastercard, but MC permitted Apple/GS a cleaner design that doesn't say that on the physical card or the design in Apple Pay.)

Amex isn't covered by this settlement, and if you surcharge as a merchant who accepts Visa, Mastercard, or both Visa/MC, and you also accept Amex - it is absolutely impossible to surcharge all cards without breaking somebody's network rules.

Visa and Mastercard surcharge rules hold that you can't surcharge debit or prepaid products, even if you run them in credit mode without PIN and more expensive swipe fees.

Amex on the other hand has a most favored nation clause - if you surcharge Amex products, "all other payment methods" in terms of cards must be surcharged - including debit and prepaid.

So let's walk through our scenario surcharges:

1. You don't surcharge at all... you're not surcharging.
2. You surcharge all cards including debit. Amex is cool with this, but you're breaking Visa and Mastercard network rules. In 2023 Visa started threatening acquirers to warn merchants that they will be giving out hefty fines for non-compliance and doing secret shopping.
3. You surcharge credit only, but spare debit. Visa/Mastercard are fine with this, but you're breaking Amex's network rules.
4. You drop Amex acceptance. You can surcharge credit on Visa/MC/Discover and be compliant, but you lose access to Amex cardholders.
5. You surcharge Visa/MC, but spare all Amex products. That just creates incentive for your cardholders to use Amex with higher swipe fees.
6. You drop Visa/MC to be able to surcharge all Amex and Discover cards. Congrats, you've lost access to the majority of the US credit card market.

See above on Amex and Visa/MC that have conflicting rules that create a catch-22 for surcharging if you accept Visa, MC or both, in addition to Amex.

This all ignores that Visa/MC rules prohibit surcharging debit products even when they run as "credit" without PIN at higher swipe fees, so unless your point of sale is somehow smarter than anything I've ever seen in practice to discriminate on the BIN and automatically spare Visa/MC debit the surcharge, then your employees have to be absolutely eagle eyed to be compliant and not surcharge debit cad holders.

If you have guts and particularly if it's a small business, maybe tell them first so they can be educated and avoid network fines. If you do and they listen, you make a merchant realize they're doing something they aren't allowed to do and you get your desired end result (no surcharging), if they don't, you tried before the stick came in (network smackdown).

Visa was totally impotent on this during 2021 and just basically said that they reminded the merchant acquirer to tell the merchant to be compliant, but 2023 drastically changed the picture - Visa lowered their maximum permitted surcharge to 3%, started warning merchant acquirers to tell merchants that if they're not compliant there's going to be huge fines, and updated their merchant surcharge FAQ to say that they're sending secret shoppers around to check for non-compliant surcharging and merchant acquirers could be fined $1000+ for non-compliant surcharging (which the merchant acquirer is going to pass to the merchant with fees).