Designer Brands Too Many Card Digits on Receipts Class Action

As identity theft becomes more and more of a problem, measures to keep criminals from obtaining payment card information also become more important. This class action brings suit under the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA) and the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). The complaint alleges that Designer Brands, Inc. prints too much payment card information on its customer receipts.

A 2018 Harris poll found that 60 million people in the US have been victims of identity theft. The number of incidents is rising each year, the complaint says, with account takeovers in 2017 tripling over 2016 to cause losses of $5.1 billion.

The complaint quotes President George W. Bush, when he signed FACTA into law, as saying, “Slips of paper that most people throw away should not hold the key to their savings and financial secrets.” The point of the law was to protect privacy.

The part of FACTA at issue here is the part governing the printing of receipts given to customers at the point of sale in a transaction. The complaint quotes this part of the law as saying, “Except as otherwise provided in this subsection, no person that accepts credit cards or debit cards for the transaction of business shall print more than the last 5 digits of the card number or the expiration date upon any receipt provided to the cardholder at the point of sale or transaction.”

This law was passed in 2003, and companies were given three years to comply. Major credit card companies, such as Visa and American Express, undertook to inform merchants who processed their cards. They imposed the law’s requirements on the merchants as part of the agreements for accepting their credit cards. However, all these years later, many merchants have still not complied. 

In this case, on August 28, 2019, plaintiff Sharon Peskett used her debit card to buy something at a store owned by Designer Brands in Pasadena, Los Angeles County, California. The receipt that the store person handed her contained the first six and last four digits of her debit card number. It also included her full name and information about her membership in the company’s rewards program.

The class for this action is all persons in the US who, between September 24, 2019 and the date of class certification in this case, engaged in a transaction using a debit or credit card at a Designer Brands, Inc. retail location in the US, at which time the point-of-sale system was programmed to put out a printed receipt showing more than the last five digits of the credit or debit card number or the expiration date of the credit or debit card used.

Article Type: Lawsuit
Topic: Privacy
Tags: FACTA, More Than Five Credit/Debit Card Numbers Printed