Dive Brief:

• Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is suing Visa for $5 billion over price-fixing and swipe fees, which it says violated anti-trust law between Jan. 1, 2004 and November 27, 2012. The world’s largest retailer and several others, including the Minnesota Twins baseball team, withdrew from a $5.7 billion class action settlement that had been decided in a New York court in December, which would have prevented future litigation.

• On March 21, a three-judge U.S. appeals court ruled against retailers and upheld Federal Reserve rules from 2011 that had capped debit swipe fees at higher rates than what retailers said was intended by Congress.

• Credit and debit card fees are typically as high as 2% of retail transactions. Visa, for its part, had no comment.

Dive Insight:

With last week’s ruling from the U.S. federal appeals court and the settlement leaving many retailers unsatisfied, Wal-Mart and other retailers are clearly willing to continue the fight. Certainly the transaction fees have been galling to retailers for years, and the price pressures so prevalent these days are leaving many retailers to look for ways to boost the bottom line.