Exclusive | Visa and Mastercard Near Deal With Merchants That Would Change Rewards Landscape

Visa V -0.28%decrease; red down pointing triangle and Mastercard MA -0.24%decrease; red down pointing triangle are nearing a settlement with merchants that aims to end a 20-year-old legal dispute by lowering fees stores pay and giving them more power to reject certain credit cards, according to people familiar with the matter.

Under terms being discussed, Visa and Mastercard would lower credit-card interchange fees, which are often between 2% and 2.5%, by an average of around 0.1 percentage point over several years, the people said. They would also loosen rules that require merchants that accept one of a network’s credit cards to accept all of them.