Pittsburgh-based PNC Bank, which has several branches in the Milwaukee area, has agreed to pay $90 million to settle a class-action lawsuit that accused the bank of improperly manipulating its customers’ debit-card transactions to generate excess overdraft fee revenues.
PNC Bank, a unit of PNC Financial Services Group Inc., will pay the fine to settle the lawsuit, which was part of litigation involving more than 30 banks. The case is pending before U.S. District Judge James Lawrence King in Miami, Fla.
The customers claimed PNC Bank’s computer system re-sequenced the actual order of debit card and ATM transactions by posting them in highest-to-lowest dollar amount instead of the actual order in which they were initiated. That led to excess overdraft fees, the plaintiffs say.
PNC joined Bank of America Corp, JPMorgan Chase & Co and several smaller banks in settling litigation over the fees, which are typically assessed when customers overdraw their checking accounts by using debit cards.
