Around 46 million people in the UK could be owed cash from Mastercard if a lawsuit is successful against the credit card company.
The firm is being sued over its past high payment fees, which main claimant Walter Merricks argues led to customers being charged higher prices by businesses.
Yesterday the Competition Appeal Tribunal said Merricks can represent around 46 million consumers seeking £10billion in payouts from Mastercard - reports Mirror Online.
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If the case is successful each person would get an average of £217.39, with most people in the UK in line to get the cash.
Merricks, the former head of the Financial Ombudsman Service, had wanted to include claims from the now-dead in the group lawsuit, but the tribunal said no.
If the deceased had been included, there would have been around 60 million claimants and £14 billion in damages.
This case has been in the pipeline for some time.
Merricks' proposed class action was thrown out in July 2017 by a specialist tribunal, which ruled the claim was "not suitable to be brought in collective proceedings".
However, in April 2019 it was revived by the Court of Appeal.
In December 2020 Mastercard lost its Supreme Court appeal on the issue.
The latest tribunal decision sets the shape of the case and who can be included, and it will now be heard in court.
Merricks previously said: "Mastercard has been a sustained competition law breaker, imposing excessive card transaction charges over a prolonged period in a way it must have known would impose an invisible tax on UK consumers."
The lawyer added that the prices of "everything we all bought from 1992 to 2008 were higher than they should have been".
What do I have to do to be included?
Nothing, provided you were over the age of 16 and resident in the UK for at least three months between 1992 and 2008.
The other criteria is that you bought something in that time from a shop that accepted Mastercard.
Merricks' argument is that the high fees the card firm charged businesses were all passed on to consumers, who should now get some of that back.
This is an 'opt-out' claim, meaning every eligible person is automatically included unless they remove themselves.
A Mastercard spokesperson said: "This claim isn’t being brought by UK consumers but is being driven by lawyers, backed by organisations primarily focused on making money for themselves.
"The decision reduces the value of this spurious claim by more than 35%. Mastercard is confident that over the coming months a review of key facts will further significantly reduce the size and viability of the claim.”
Merricks' case is one of the first mass consumer 'opt out' collective action cases to be brought since the Consumer Rights Act opened the door to these types of claims in 2015.
Class actions are currently rare in the UK but very common in the US.
They work by lumping together lots of claimants with very similar cases, rather than them all suing individually.
Often one of the claimants' cases is used as a champion to represent all of the others. If it wins, everyone wins - or vice-versa.
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