FACTA Credit Card Receipt Rules

The content of receipts for credit and debit card transactions is governed by a federal law called the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act, or FACTA.

These FACTA credit card receipt rules were set up to protect consumers from credit fraud or identity theft that could happen if too much card information is revealed on the receipt.

Under FACTA credit card receipt rules, electronically-printed credit and debit card receipts given to the customer at the point of sale must not display the card’s expiration date or any more than the last five digits of the account number.

The Act makes a few exceptions: the truncation requirement does not apply to receipts that are mechanically imprinted from the card or written out by hand, and it doesn’t apply to the business’s own records of the transaction.

When Congress passed this particular requirement in 2003, it gave businesses as much as three years to comply. Newer electronic card processing machines were required to be FACTA-compliant by December 2004, and merchants with older machines were given until December 2006 to upgrade them.

Since then, the truncation requirement has applied to all electronically-printed receipts given to customers at the point of sale.

Enforcing FACTA Credit Card Receipt Rules

The Federal Trade Commission, the agency charged with administering FACTA credit card receipt rules, sometimes carries out enforcement actions against companies that allow too much information to be printed on their credit card receipts.

These actions can lead to injunctions or civil penalties.

FACTA also gives affected consumers a chance to enforce the law themselves. Consumers who receive a receipt that violates FACTA may bring a civil FACTA lawsuit against the business.

If successful, such a claim could reward the plaintiff with damages and reimbursement of attorney’s fees.

The statutory damages provisions of FACTA make these civil claims more powerful than consumers may expect. These provisions kick in if the plaintiff can show that a FACTA violation was “willful.”

Each such violation can put the defendant on the hook for $100 to $1,000 in statutory damages. These damage awards can apply regardless of the transaction’s dollar amount or the size of the business involved.

FACTA Class Action Lawsuits

Multiply statutory damages on that scale by the number of violations that an entire plaintiff class may claim, and the resulting damage award can easily become astronomical.

Some FACTA class action lawsuits have begun with assertions of damage awards in the upper millions and sometimes even billions of dollars.

While the final dollar amount of a settlement or damage award isn’t always as big as the amount originally pleaded, many FACTA settlements have been worth several million dollars each.

One recent plaintiff rounded up a total of $11 million in settlement agreements in two FACTA lawsuits, one against Spirit Airlines and the other against Laboratory Corporation of America.

The average awards for members of those plaintiff classes were estimated to be around $200 or $265 each. The plaintiff himself received a much larger incentive award, which compensates him for doing the legwork involved in representing the rest of the plaintiff classes. In the LabCorp case, that incentive award totaled $10,000.

Free FACTA Class Action Lawsuit Investigation

If you made one or more purchases and the retailer provided you with a receipt that contained more than the last five digits of your credit or debit card number or the expiration date, you may be eligible for a free class action lawsuit investigation and to pursue compensation for these FACTA violations.

Get Started