U.S. Bank will pay nearly $36 million in connection with customers’ inability to access unemployment benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic, two regulators said Tuesday, announcing separate penalties.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ordered the Minneapolis-based lender to pay $20.7 million over expanded anti-fraud controls that spurred holders of the ReliaCard prepaid card to weather freezes to their benefits. The controls, rolled out in the summer of 2020, forced cardholders to verify their identities to unfreeze their accounts and, in some cases, U.S. Bank failed to provide consumers with provisional credits after they reported unauthorized transfers from their accounts, the bureau said.
