• The New York Times , Thursday, June 26, 2008 10:01 AM

MasterCard on Wednesday agreed to pay $1.8 billion to American Express to settle claims related to a 2004 antitrust lawsuit. Visa agreed to pay more than $2.1 billion to AmEx seven months ago to put similar claims behind it as it raced ahead with plans for an initial public offering in March.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2004 that Visa and MasterCard violated antitrust rules by barring their member banks from offering credit cards that could be used on rival payment networks. American Express and Discover Financial filed suit, seeking billions of dollars in damages based on the revenue they thought that they had lost.

The settlement is likely to put pressure on both Visa and MasterCard to strike similar deals with Discover, which is seeking as much as $6 billion from the two companies. But analysts expect any settlement with the card companies to be far lower than the $4 billion collected by AmEx because Discover's user fees are much lower and its partnerships with outside card issuers are less lucrative.

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