AnnaMaria Andriotis

We're definitely entering a new era of credit card rules that could impact most, the vast majority of credit cards with rewards programs out there.

Possibly.

And I say that because it's a complicated question.

We're definitely entering a new era of credit card rules that could impact most, the vast majority of credit cards with rewards programs out there.

Much of this comes down to interchange fees.

So every time that consumers pay with a credit card, the merchant pays the bank that issued your credit card what's called an interchange fee.

These fees vary, but they're often between 2% to 2.5% of the purchase price.

Merchants pay tens of billions of dollars

In these fees, every year, these costs have been rising so much for merchants because more and more consumers have switched from cash and debit cards to credit cards.

Two, it's because more and more people are shopping with rewards cards.

And it's because credit cards with rewards have higher interchange fees than credit cards that don't have rewards programs.

For decades, Visa and MasterCard have had what they call an honor all cards rule.

What this rule has said is, merchant, if you accept one Visa credit card, you have to accept all Visa credit cards.

What this settlement has done

if it's approved by the court, is it essentially says to merchants, okay, we're creating three buckets of acceptance for credit cards.

But the moment that you choose to accept one rewards credit card that falls into that rewards bucket, you have to accept all of those credit cards.

So here's what consumers can expect.

There is a possibility that merchants, when you pull out to pay with a rewards credit card, they'll say no.

The chances of merchants doing that are, with big merchants, not very high.

Because what it could result in would be merchants seeing their sales fall potentially in a pretty substantial way.