For more than a decade, customers of SunTrust Bank in Georgia paid overdraft fees on small debit-card and ATM transactions, a practice a class-action lawsuit argued ran afoul of the state’s usury laws. That dispute has produced a $240 million settlement, and the bank that inherited it, now Truist after its 2019 merger, has begun sending payment notices to hundreds of thousands of former account holders. Eligible Georgians have until September 14, 2026, to file a claim.
The overdraft fees at the center of a $240 million deal
The lawsuit focused on how SunTrust charged overdraft fees when customers overdrew their accounts by small amounts through debit-card purchases or ATM withdrawals. Plaintiffs contended those charges functioned as interest on very short-term credit and, measured that way, exceeded the rate ceilings Georgia law places on lending. Rather than continue litigating that theory, SunTrust’s successor agreed to fund a $240 million settlement to resolve the claims without admitting wrongdoing.
The deal applies specifically to overdraft charges on transactions of $500 or less, the small-dollar overdrafts that generated the bulk of the disputed fees. According to the official SunTrust overdraft class-action settlement site, roughly 464,000 account holders were identified and began receiving notices by mail and email starting July 14, 2026, each carrying a claim identification number tied to the recipient’s account history.
The usury framing is what set the case apart. Most overdraft lawsuits argue that a bank reordered transactions to maximize the number of fees it could charge; this one instead treated the fee itself as the price of a tiny, involuntary loan and asked whether that price crossed the interest ceiling Georgia law imposes on lending. Applied to an overdraft of a few dollars repaid within days, even a modest flat charge can translate into a triple-digit annualized rate, which was the heart of the plaintiffs’ theory and the reason the bank’s successor chose to settle rather than test it at trial.
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Who counts as a class member in Georgia
Eligibility turns on a precise combination of residency, account history, and timing. The class covers people who were Georgia citizens continuously from July 12, 2010 through October 6, 2017 and who held a SunTrust deposit account during that stretch. On top of that, a class member must have paid at least one overdraft fee on a debit-card or ATM overdraft of $500 or less at some point between July 12, 2006 and October 6, 2017.
Those two dates matter because the qualifying fees reach further back than the residency window. Coverage of the deal by Moneywise notes that eligible charges date to 2006, even though the continuous-residency requirement is measured over the later 2010-to-2017 period. Customers who paid overdraft fees in the earlier years, so long as they meet the residency test, are not excluded by the narrower dates that appear in some descriptions of the case.
Former account holders can still qualify even if they have since moved their banking elsewhere. Eligibility rests on the historical fees rather than any current relationship with Truist, and people who did not keep old statements are not automatically shut out, because the administrator built the notice list from the bank’s own historical account records. Anyone who believes a qualifying fee was charged but never received a notice can contact the administrator to be added rather than assume they were excluded.
Payouts of $5 to $1,000 and the September 14 deadline
Individual payments are expected to range from about $5 to $1,000, with the exact figure depending on how many overdraft fees a person paid and how many valid claims are filed against the fund. Because the pool is fixed and divided proportionally, a larger number of claims lowers each individual check, while claimants who paid more in qualifying fees receive proportionally more of the settlement.
The claim deadline is September 14, 2026, and it remains open. Class members who received a notice with a claim identification number can file online or by mail, and those who believe they qualify but never got a notice can still submit a claim before the cutoff. Missing the date forfeits any payment, because the settlement releases the underlying legal claims once it is finalized.
Filing is not the only option on the table. As in any class action, a member can instead object to the terms or opt out to keep the right to sue SunTrust’s successor independently, though opting out means surrendering a share of the $240 million fund. For most eligible Georgians the individual fees at stake are far too small to justify a separate lawsuit, which is exactly why the settlement’s value lies in the low-effort claim rather than in continued litigation.
The case is a reminder that overdraft practices banks once treated as routine have become a recurring target of consumer litigation, and that the money returned often flows back years after the fees were charged. For former SunTrust customers in Georgia, the question is narrower than the headline suggests: whether they held the account during the covered years, paid a qualifying fee, and file before September 14. The settlement administrator’s site remains the authoritative source for claim status and payment timing.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed against primary sources by The Money Overview editorial team.
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