Citi to refund $700 million for deceptive card practices
Citigroup will refund $700 million to consumers and will pay $70 million in fines for illegal and deceptive credit card practices, the bank and federal regulators said Tuesday.
The order, coming from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is the latest multimillion dollar settlement against the largest credit card issuers for their role in selling "add-on" products to customers, such as credit score monitoring or "rush" processing of payments. Bank of America reached a similar, slightly larger settlement with regulators in 2014 and JPMorgan Chase was fined in 2013.
Under its agreement with the CFPB, Citi will issue refunds to 8.8 million affected consumers who paid for these types of add-on products, and will pay two separate $35 million fines to the CFPB and to the federal bank regulator the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
