FleetCor, the fuel-card company now known as Corpay, and its chief executive Ronald Clarke will pay $100 million to settle a Federal Trade Commission administrative action over fees that customers never agreed to pay. The FTC announced the deal on September 17, 2026, after federal courts found the company had charged hidden and unauthorized fees and misled businesses about fuel savings. The money is earmarked for redress to the company’s business customers, most of them small businesses, and the order still has to clear a 30-day public comment period before it becomes final.
What The FTC Says FleetCor Charged Customers
According to the FTC’s September 17 announcement, FleetCor imposed “a broad array of unauthorized fees” that customers did not know about and did not agree to pay. The agency says those charges totaled hundreds of millions of dollars and harmed tens of thousands of customers.
The complaint also said FleetCor charged late fees to customers who had paid on time, or who were prevented by FleetCor itself from paying on time. On top of the fees, the FTC alleged that the company misrepresented the gas savings, fraud-control features and costs associated with its fuel cards, which are marketed to businesses that run trucks, vans and service vehicles.
“FleetCor deceived its small business customers by promising fuel savings that never materialized, while unfairly charging them hidden and unauthorized fees,” said Christopher Mufarrige, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. He added that the order “will help return money to the customers the company took advantage of.”
When a fee appears that nobody agreed to. The FleetCor case turned on charges that surfaced quietly months after an account opened, and the practical response starts with a dated log of every disputed line and the payment that preceded it, the kind of record the protected-funds and dispute log inside The Bank Account & Debt Protection Kit is built to hold.
How The Fees Stayed Hidden For Years
The FTC’s description of the scheme centers on timing and presentation rather than the price of fuel. According to the complaint, FleetCor often waited several billing cycles before it began charging many fees, which made new charges less noticeable to customers who had grown used to a familiar monthly bill.
The agency also alleged that FleetCor’s invoices did not disclose that any fees were being charged at all. Customers had to go looking in separate account management reports to find them, and even there, the FTC said, many fees were buried among other information or not listed. A business owner reviewing only the invoice total would have had little reason to suspect that part of the balance came from charges never agreed to in the first place.
That pattern is common to many billing disputes, not just fuel cards. A late fee can depend on four different dates: the due date printed on a statement, the day a payment was sent, the day the bank completed it and the day the card company posted it. When a company controls the posting step, a payment made on time can still be treated as late. The FTC’s finding that FleetCor charged late fees to customers who had paid on time shows why payment confirmations and bank records carry more weight in a dispute than a remembered due date.
A Case Seven Years In The Making
The FTC first sued FleetCor Technologies and Clarke in federal court in 2019. In 2023, a federal district court entered summary judgment for the FTC on all counts, finding that the company had charged hidden or otherwise unauthorized fees and had misrepresented the gas savings and fees tied to its cards.
The court’s order permanently bars FleetCor from billing a customer for any charge unless it first obtains the customer’s express informed consent and provides clear and unavoidable information about the charge. It also prohibits the company from hiding material information about a charge behind a hyperlink and from making deceptive claims about its fuel cards.
In 2026, a federal appeals court upheld the summary judgment against FleetCor on all counts and affirmed the permanent injunction against the company. The appeals court affirmed the judgment against Clarke on all but one count but vacated the injunction as it applied to him personally. Under the new settlement, FleetCor and Clarke have agreed not to oppose reimposition of a federal court injunction against Clarke.
The Commission voted 1-0-1 to accept the consent agreement, with FTC Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson recused. Once the order becomes final, each violation can bring a civil penalty of up to $53,088, according to the agency.
What Happens Next For The $100 Million
The settlement is not yet final. The FTC said it will publish a description of the consent agreement in the Federal Register, after which the public will have 30 days to comment. The Commission will then decide whether to make the proposed order final. Comments will be posted on Regulations.gov once processed.
The $100 million is designated for redress to FleetCor’s business customers harmed by the practices in the case. The FTC has not announced a claims process, a deadline or an administrator. In past cases, the agency has often sent payments directly to affected customers based on company records, and it lists active and completed distributions on its FTC refund programs page. Any legitimate notice about FleetCor redress will point back to that page or name an FTC-approved administrator.
The agency’s standing warning applies here: the FTC says it will never demand money, make threats, tell anyone to transfer money or promise a prize. A caller or email offering to speed up a FleetCor payment in exchange for a fee or bank login is a scam.
Why This Matters For Retirees Who Run Small Businesses
Many older Americans keep working past traditional retirement age through a small business, whether a landscaping crew, a delivery route, a contracting outfit or a family farm. Fuel cards and other fleet accounts are common tools for those operations, and the fees in this case were designed to be hard to spot on the monthly bill.
For owners who used a FleetCor or Corpay fuel card, the most useful step now is to gather invoices, account management reports and bank records showing payment dates, and to keep them together until the FTC announces how redress will work. Records that show a payment sent before a due date, followed by a late fee, align directly with the conduct the courts found unlawful.
The broader lesson reaches beyond fuel cards. Recurring business and household accounts, from software subscriptions to equipment leases, can add charges well after the first bill. A periodic review of the full account detail, not just the invoice total, is the most reliable way to catch a charge that was never part of the deal. Customers who believe they were harmed by deceptive billing practices can file a report at ReportFraud.ftc.gov.
Sorting Out A Charge That Never Should Have Been There
The FleetCor redress process has not opened, and until it does, the work that matters most is keeping billing proof in order: which fees appeared, when payments cleared and what the account terms said at the time. An unauthorized charge that goes unchallenged can also turn into a balance a collector later tries to enforce.
The Bank Account & Debt Protection Kit includes the debt-validation steps for challenging a balance a collector claims is owed and a protected-funds and dispute log for tracking each contested charge and the proof behind it.
Both tools are part of The Bank Account & Debt Protection Kit.
This article was prepared with AI assistance and reviewed against the linked official sources.
