Heartland Payment Systems Investigation

Squitieri & Fearon, LLP has filed a federal lawsuit against Heartland Payment Systems, Inc., one of the largest credit card processors in the U.S.

The suit was filed in the District Court of New Jersey and accuses Heartland of charging customers “unjustifiable fees – sometimes retroactively” – in flagrant disregard of the promises Heartland made to merchants.  Among other things, the lawsuit alleges that in 2014 Heartland announced that merchants would be able to process American Express transactions through Heartland at the same rates that they process Visa and MasterCard transactions.  But in October 2014 Heartland violated those promises by retroactively charging its customers higher fees for processing American Express than they were paying to process their Visa and MasterCard transactions.  Those charges showed up in the October 2014 account statement in a section called “Other Processing and One-Time Fees” and were labeled as “American Express Fee Adjustment”.  The lawsuit alleges that these fees were unauthorized and that Heartland improperly charged merchants across the country for these fees.  Then, beginning in November 2014 Heartland started charging merchants much more to process American Express than it charged to process Visa and MasterCard transactions, creating enormous, unauthorized profits for Heartland at the expense of its merchants, many of whom are small businesses.

Heartland increased its profits by tens of millions of dollars by doing so and violated its contracts with merchants.  Plaintiff seeks to recover those improper charges and has asserted the claims as a class action for merchants across the country who processed American Express transactions with Heartland in 2014.

A copy of the Complaint is available HERE

For more information about this case, please contact: Stephen J. Fearon, Jr. at (212) 421-6492 or stephen@sfclasslaw.com; or Raymond Barto at (212) 421-6492 or raymond@sfclasslaw.com.

 


 

Heartland Payment Systems Investigation

  • Please list the name of the institution that you claim engaged in an improper fee sharing agreement.
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