A United States federal judge on Tuesday threw out a proposed $30 billion settlement between Visa, Mastercard, and U.S. retailers, signaling that the credit card giants may need to offer greater concessions to end their long-running swipe fee dispute.

The deal, unveiled in March, sought to lower the interchange fees merchants pay on credit card transactions, according to CNN.

The full details of Tuesday’s ruling by Judge Margo Brodie of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York remain under seal.

However, a court memo stated she is “not likely to grant final approval” to the preliminary settlement unless revisions are made.

The proposed settlement, which required final approval from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, arose from a 2005 antitrust class-action lawsuit.

Merchants claimed that Visa, Mastercard, and affiliated banks conspired to impose inflated swipe fees and restricted their ability to encourage customers to use more affordable payment methods.

As part of the preliminary settlement, Visa and Mastercard did not admit to any wrongdoing but agreed to freeze swipe fee rates at their December 31, 2023 levels for five years.

Visa and Mastercard also agreed to lift certain restrictions, giving merchants more freedom to encourage customers to use lower-cost payment options.

The proposed settlement would have allowed businesses to add surcharges based on the type of Visa or Mastercard used—potentially impacting customers with rewards cards, which often carry higher swipe fees.

However, the National Federation of Independent Business described the settlement as only “temporary relief” for small businesses, not a permanent solution, Jeff Brabant, the group’s vice president of federal government relations, said in a statement.

The Merchants Payments Coalition—representing supermarkets, retail chains, restaurants, drugstores, convenience stores, gas stations, and online retailers advocating for payment system reform—criticized the preliminary settlement as inadequate.

Christopher Jones, a member of the Merchants Payments Coalition’s executive committee, argued that the settlement would have let credit card companies “keep price-fixing swipe fees and blocking competition.”

“Thankfully, the judge made the right call in recognizing what a bad deal this would have been for Main Street merchants and their customers,” Jones said in a statement to CNN on Tuesday.

In an email statement, a Mastercard spokesperson said the company was “disappointed” by the ruling. “We believe the settlement presented a fair resolution of this long-standing dispute, most notably by giving business owners more flexibility in how they manage their card acceptance activities. We will pursue our options to ensure a proper resolution of this matter.”

Visa did not immediately respond to request for comment.