Merchants waiting for years on payouts from a Visa-Mastercard antitrust lawsuit have a new periodic report to shed light on the state of settlement payouts and claims working their way through a dispute process.

Some 40,000 merchants with claims on a Visa-Mastercard interchange settlement are awaiting a special master’s review as part of payouts in the long-running litigation, according to a first quarterly update filed Friday.

The settlement fund held $5.17 billion as of June 30, following the initial distribution of $418.9 million to merchants, according to the report by Epiq, the class administrator in the litigation.

Of the 40,208 claims referred to James Orenstein, the special master, most are under review for reasons other than a tax ID conflict. Of those, 1,255 are cases where “the multi-step conflict resolution process has been exhausted,” the report said.

Orenstein, a retired magistrate in New York City, was appointed in September 2024 to oversee claim disputes.

About 13,000 merchant tax identification numbers remain in conflict, “where more than one registrant has asserted they have proof of authority to act on behalf of the TIN,” the administrator said. Another 12,414 merchants are still working to have their sales data submissions — which affects their disbursement from the settlement — adjudicated.

Overall, 2.12 million merchant tax identification numbers were registered as part of the overall group of business owners due a potential payout from the settlement, according to the report filed with the federal court in Brooklyn, New York, where the litigation is proceeding. Of those, 1.47 million filed a claim.

The court directed the plaintiffs and claims administrator to produce the updates in response to a class member’s request earlier this year for more insights into the progress of merchant payouts. The next quarterly report is due Oct. 9.

Roughly 599,000 claims were included in the initial distribution of settlement money. In May, plaintiffs asked U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan to approve a second disbursement of funds. The request is pending.

Merchants reached a settlement with the card networks for the damages portion of the case in 2018, although numerous plaintiffs opted out of the agreement to pursue their own damages from the networks. The settlement received final approval by a federal judge the following year, followed by appeals.

The settlement partially resolved a long-running antitrust case in which merchants alleged the two network giants charged excessive interchange fees when customers paid with a credit or debit card. The class of merchants includes any U.S. business that accepted Visa or Mastercard-branded cards between Jan. 1, 2004, and Jan. 25, 2019.

On June 9, Cogan granted preliminary approval for a separate part of the litigation, concerning injunctive relief for plaintiffs.