FleetCor Technologies Inc, now trading as Corpay Inc, and its chief executive Ronald Clarke have agreed to pay $100 million (roughly £79 million) to settle allegations brought by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that the company hit small business customers with undisclosed fees on its fuel cards.

The regulator’s case, first lodged in a US federal court in 2019, accused the payments firm of levying a wide range of unauthorised charges that customers were never told about and never agreed to, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars in losses across tens of thousands of accounts.

The FTC also alleged that FleetCor imposed late fees on customers who had either paid on time or had been prevented from doing so by the company itself, and that it overstated the fuel savings, fraud protection and true cost of its cards.

Christopher Mufarrige, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said the company had lured small businesses in with promises of fuel savings that failed to materialise, while quietly loading their accounts with hidden charges. He added that the settlement would help return funds to those affected.

Investigators found that FleetCor typically delayed introducing new fees until several billing cycles had passed, reducing the likelihood customers would notice them, and that its invoices gave no indication fees were being applied at all – leaving customers to dig through separate account reports, where charges were often buried or omitted entirely.

A federal district court ruled in the FTC’s favour on every count in 2023, concluding that FleetCor had indeed charged hidden or unauthorised fees and misrepresented both the savings and costs tied to its cards.

That ruling came with a permanent injunction barring the company from billing customers without clear, upfront consent, from concealing key charge details behind hyperlinks, and from making misleading claims about its products.

Earlier this year, a federal appeals court upheld the judgment against FleetCor in full, alongside the permanent injunction, according to a FTC statement issued on September 17.

It largely upheld the findings against Clarke personally as well, though it threw out one count and lifted the injunction that had applied to him individually.

Under the new settlement, FleetCor and Clarke will not contest the reinstatement of a court order against him.

The $100 million will go towards compensating business customers harmed by the practices.

The FTC’s four-member commission approved the settlement by a vote of one to nought, with one recusal – Chairman Andrew Ferguson stepped aside from the vote.

The agreement will be published in the Federal Register and opened to 30 days of public comment before the Commission decides whether to finalise it.

Once a consent order is made final, breaching it carries the weight of law, with each violation liable to a civil penalty of up to $53,088.