American Express 17.5M Settlement Over Antisteering Rules Raising Illinois Retail Prices

American Express’s “antisteering” rules are contract terms historically used in its merchant agreements to stop retailers from nudging customers toward cheaper payment options at the register—such as recommending Visa, Mastercard, or Discover when those networks cost the merchant less in processing fees. Plaintiffs in this Illinois-focused class action argued that when big retailers can’t steer shoppers to lower-fee cards, the added acceptance costs get baked into shelf prices, meaning everyone can pay more regardless of what card they use. The settlement covers individuals with an Illinois billing address who used certain nonrewards (no annual fee, no rewards) Visa/Mastercard/Discover cards for in-person purchases at listed major chains in Illinois from Jan. 29, 2016, to June 1, 2022, and who did not hold an Amex card during that period. The lawsuit was filed because consumers claimed they were indirectly harmed by these anti-steering restraints, framing them as anticompetitive conduct that inflated retail prices statewide; after a trial that concluded in August 2025, the Illinois nonrewards credit-card class was the only one to win damages among 12 certified classes. American Express denies wrongdoing but agreed to a $17.5 million settlement before final judgment, which is significant because it converts a theory many consumers feel intuitively—“card fees raise prices”—into a litigated, Illinois-law finding tied to specific contractual restrictions and a defined group of shoppers, potentially incentivizing more scrutiny of how payment rules affect everyday pricing at large merchants. More broadly, the dispute sits in the long-running battle over credit-card “network rules” and merchant restraints, a space shaped by antitrust law and, at the federal level, the Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in *Ohio v. American Express*, which made it harder to prove harm by emphasizing the two-sided nature of card platforms (cardholders and merchants). Even so, states can apply their own competition and consumer-protection standards, and other payment-industry fights—like limits on surcharging, restrictions on discounting, interchange-fee litigation, and merchant challenges to network rules—continue to test where regulators and courts draw the line between legitimate brand-protection provisions and contractual terms that can dampen price competition at the point of sale