Visa and Mastercard announced Monday that they reached a proposed settlement that would lower charges that merchants pay to the credit card networks.

While those fees are paid by the store every time a customer makes a transaction, they often get passed onto consumers through higher costs for goods and services.

These fees are commonly referred to as swipe fees or interchange fees, which the National Retail Federation (NRF) argued added inflationary pressure to the US economy, driving up prices for households nationwide.

These fees often fall between 2% and 2.5%. But under the long-awaited deal, which would end 20 years of litigation, Mastercard and Visa agreed to lower the fees that businesses pay when customers use their credit cards by about one-tenth of a percent on most US credit c

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