David Morris, the principal analyst for payments at eMarketer, called the settlement’s potential impact “enormous” since it gives merchants more flexibility in handling different payment methods.

Another source in the payment space I spoke to said it gave momentum to the adoption of open banking — the concept of banks having to share customer data with each other that’s already popular in Europe.

Where things land will be interesting, though. Merchants still want to make the payment process seamless for their customers, lest they risk losing them to a competitor.

Perhaps that’s why one analyst told Business Insider’s Alex Bitter he doesn’t expect major retailers to pass swipe fees along to customers. Instead, they’ll just absorb the costs via other channels like labor, he said.

That might be possible for a giant chain, but that’s a difficult proposition for smaller businesses, which often already charge more for credit-card transactions. One investor in the space told me smaller merchants could form buying groups to increase their negotiating power.

In the meantime, some merchants are already voicing their displeasure. The settlement, which took nearly two decades to reach, “amounts to pennies on the dollar.”

But maybe, not unlike the fees the agreement targets, what seems small could eventually add up to something big.