FleetCor pays $100 million after hiding fees from small business customers

FleetCor Technologies, the fuel-card company that renamed itself Corpay in 2021, must pay $100 million in redress to small business customers after a federal appeals court upheld findings that it violated the FTC Act by charging hidden and unauthorized fees, the Federal Trade Commission said Sept. 17, 2026. Tens of thousands of customers, overwhelmingly small businesses, paid fees they never authorized, on top of late charges billed even when they paid on time. The settlement closes a case the FTC first filed in federal court in December 2019.

FleetCor’s fuel cards let trucking outfits, delivery fleets and other small operators pay for gas at the pump while tracking spending across dozens or hundreds of vehicles from one account. The FTC’s case never targeted that core product. It targeted how the company priced it — fees layered onto invoices after the sale, fuel-savings claims that did not hold up, and new charges introduced gradually enough that customers rarely noticed them appear. A small fleet operator running a handful of trucks had little practical way to audit a monthly statement against the marketing pitch that sold the card in the first place.

Late fees charged to customers who already paid

The FTC’s press release announcing the settlement lays out the core finding: FleetCor charged late fees to customers who had, in fact, paid on time, and layered on other unauthorized charges never disclosed at the point of sale. The agency’s Bureau of Consumer Protection put the misconduct plainly. “FleetCor deceived its small business customers by promising fuel savings that never materialized, while unfairly charging them hidden and unauthorized fees,” said Christopher Mufarrige, the bureau’s director.

The company’s own billing calendar compounded the problem. Delaying new fees across several billing cycles kept any single charge from standing out on a statement, a pattern the FTC treated as a design choice rather than an accident. Tens of thousands of customers were affected, the commission said, and they were overwhelmingly small businesses running fleets rather than large corporate accounts with finance staff dedicated to catching discrepancies.

The deception went beyond fee placement. FleetCor also misrepresented the gas savings its cards would deliver, oversold fraud-control features that were supposed to flag suspicious pump transactions, and advertised discounts that rarely materialized at the register. Each of those claims fed the same sales pitch: sign up for a fuel card, and the savings would offset whatever the card itself cost to carry. The FTC’s complaint treated the savings pitch and the hidden fees as two halves of one scheme rather than separate problems.

A five-count case seven years in the making

The commission sued FleetCor in December 2019, and the matter moved slowly before a district court granted summary judgment for the FTC on all five counts in 2023. Two of those counts alleged unfair practices — the unauthorized fees and the late charges billed to customers who paid on time — and the rest alleged deceptive marketing tied to the fuel-savings and fraud-control claims. FleetCor appealed, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit upheld the judgment this year, finding the company liable on every count and then-chief executive Ronald Clarke personally liable on four of the five, according to the commission’s own case file, docketed as In the Matter of Fleetcor Technologies.

The administrative order that followed spells out what happens with the money. It requires FleetCor to turn over customer records so the agency can, as the Federal Register notice on the proposed order puts it, “efficiently administer consumer redress,” and the order stays in force for 20 years assuming compliance. A 30-day public comment period on the settlement runs through Oct. 22, 2026, before it becomes final.

Corpay says the settlement carries no admission of wrongdoing

Corpay, the company FleetCor became after its 2021 rebrand, told investors it was resolving the matter without admitting fault. In a statement posted to its investor relations site, chairman and chief executive Ronald Clarke said the company was pleased to put the case behind it, pointing to compliance changes made both before and after the district court’s 2023 ruling, including clearer customer disclosures and consent-based billing in its U.S. vehicle payments division.

Clarke faces no separate financial penalty under the settlement terms, even though the appeals court found him personally liable on four of the five counts against the company. Trade coverage of the case, including reporting from Auto Remarketing, has framed the settlement as closing out allegations that stretch back roughly seven years, longer than many fleet operators have held the card in question.

Whether the $100 million actually reaches every affected small business depends on the customer records FleetCor is now required to turn over, and on how many of those tens of thousands of accounts the FTC can still track down once the comment period closes and the order takes effect. Some of the fees at issue date back close to a decade, long enough that a fleet operator may have closed the account, sold the business or switched fuel-card providers entirely before any refund check arrives.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.