Industrials

Visa (V) and Mastercard’s (MA) settlement with US merchants to lower credit card fees may “weigh a bit” on net revenue and yield in the medium term, Macquarie said Tuesday in a report. The payment processors agreed to reduce credit card fees and not increase them five years as part of a settlement of a long-running case between the companies and US merchants. “While this may weigh a bit on net revenue and yield in the medium term, both [Visa] and [Mastercard] had accrued legal reserves in preceding years,” Macquarie said. Shares of both companies were little changed as transaction fee pressure has been “a longstanding theme, well understood,” the brokerage said. Visa closed down 0.2% Tuesday, and Mastercard rose 0.2%.

Visa is one of the most mentioned companies in the U.S. across all news items in the last 12 hours, according to Factiva data. Along with Mastercard and the big credit-card-issuing banks, Visa agreed Tuesday to lower the credit card swipe fees that merchants pay to accept credit cards, as well as a host of other concessions in a settlement of long-running litigation with the merchants. The settlement also bars Visa, Mastercard and the banks from raising those rates for five years and gives merchants more flexibility at the point-of-sale, the companies said. Dow Jones & Co. owns Factiva.