Wells Fargo Settles Suit Over Merchant Card Processing Fees

E. Scott Reckard reports for the Los Angeles Times on an agreement Thursday by Wells Fargo to pay as much as $34 million to settle a lawsuit alleging that it had imposed improper credit card processing charges on about 96,000 California businesses.

The disputed charges included extra fees charged by the bank when merchants had to punch in a credit card number by hand, said Howard M. Jaffe, a Los Angeles lawyer representing the businesses.

"If a merchant failed to swipe the card, couldn't get the machine to read it and just manually input the numbers, they'd get dinged — usually by a modest amount, but it added up to millions and millions of dollars," he said.