With a merchant’s authorization, FRS will work with merchant services providers to obtain recent data and business information that FRS will use in its proprietary model to estimate card volume for the Class Period and to work with the Class Administrator to confirm interchange data. In some instances, FRS is already working with a merchant’s processor, which will expedite the flow of information that FRS needs to maximize a claim.

A merchant will receive its share of the approximately $5.54 billion settlement fund based on its proportionate share of interchange fees that all claimants paid during the January 2004 to January 2019 Class Period. In other words, recoveries will be based on the amount of a merchant’s card volume and on the total card volume submitted and approved for all claimants. That pro rata amount thus depends on how many merchants submit claims and the amount of card volume that those claims include. At this time, it is too early to tell how much that will be.

At the status conference held on September 7, 2023, the district court approved both the form of the proof of claim and the proposed claims filing period, which is expected to begin on December 1, 2023 and run through May 2024. That claim filing period will then be followed by an audit and deficiency period that, based on the process described by Class Counsel, likely will last many months. Based on Class Counsel’s disclosures and on FRS’s extensive experience, FRS believes that a distribution may be conducted sometime in 2025.

Every class member may always file a claim without retaining FRS. However, FRS provides services that likely will alleviate the administrative burden associated with preparing, filing and substantiating a claim, as well as the backand-forth claim management that often is necessary. In addition to the significant time savings, FRS’s proprietary model is designed to enable merchants to maximize their claims in light of such complicating factors as: (1) using Visa data to estimate Mastercard data; (2) merchants changing merchant processors throughout the Class Period; (3) merchants moving; (4) merchants adding locations; (5) merchants closing locations or shutting down operations completely, especially with the impact of COVID 19; and (6) mergers and acquisitions that may result in merchants overlooking card volume that should be included in their claims and thus not maximizing their recoveries. FRS’s experience will help mitigate most of those variables so that a complete and accurate proof of claim is submitted.

To make the process for its clients as efficient and seamless as possible, FRS is in communication with the Class Administrator to ensure that claim forms for all of its clients are sent directly to FRS. FRS will make every attempt to obtain claim forms for new clients that have not signed up yet but do so before claim forms are disseminated. FRS will also work directly with the Class Administrator to submit any “missing” claim forms that were never received by FRS or the merchant.