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Financial Services Law Insights and Observations

Seventh Circuit Dismisses FACTA Truncation Class Action

Credit Cards Class Action FACTA

Fintech

On April 18, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit dismissed a class action seeking damages against Shell under the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA) for displaying four digits of customers’ credit card numbers on receipts printed at Shell gas stations. Van Straaten v. Shell Oil Products Co. LLC, No. 11-8031, 2012 WL 1340111 (7th. Cir. Apr. 18, 2012). FACTA requires that such receipts truncate card numbers to display no more than the last five digits of the card number. Shell’s practice was to print the last four digits of what it calls the “primary account number,” which is the number appearing before the last five digits of the sequence of numbers appearing on the front of the credit card. The plaintiffs did not allege that Shell’s practice created a risk of identity theft, but that Shell violated FACTA by printing the wrong four numbers. Writing for a three-judge panel, Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook indicated that FACTA does not define the term “card number,” but the panel did not have to define the term, “because we can’t see why anyone should care how the term is defined.” He added that ”[a] precise definition does not matter as long as the receipt contains too few digits to allow identity theft.” As to FACTA’s authorization of $100 to $1,000 for each willful violation, Judge Easterbrook noted that “[a]n award of $100 to everyone who has used a Shell Card at a Shell station would exceed $1 billion, despite the absence of a penny’s worth of injury.”  Because Shell now prints no such digits on its receipts, “the substantive question in this litigation will not recur for Shell or anyone else; it need never be answered.”