$1.7 Million Judgment Issued Against Payment Processor

A federal court has ordered a payment processor to pay over $1.7 million in redress and to end its illegal practice of debiting consumers’ bank accounts without authorization.  (A payment processor is a middleman between merchants and credit card companies.)  InterBill Ltd. unfairly debited thousands of consumer accounts for a merchant’s non-existent “discount pharmacy cards” despite indications that the pharmacy card operation was fake.

InterBill Ltd. did not follow its own guidelines for new merchants and did not check the addresses, phone numbers or references that the bogus merchant provided.   The company continued to process the false charges to consumer accounts even after receiving complaints from consumers and banks, and after receiving unacceptable explanations for the unauthorized debits from the bogus merchant.   More than 70% of the merchant’s transactions were returned or refused by the consumers’ banks.  More than $2.38 million was debited from consumer accounts.