PNC Bank agreed in 2012 to pay $90 million to settle a class action lawsuit over overdraft fees, resolving claims that it reordered debit card and ATM transactions from highest to lowest dollar amount to trigger more overdraft charges. The settlement received final court approval in August 2013, and refunds went out to eligible customers in April 2014.1Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. PNC Bank Refunding Customers Hit by Fees A second, smaller settlement of $7.5 million later covered former RBC Bank customers whose accounts PNC inherited when it bought RBC in 2012.2Bloomberg Law. PNC Resolves Decade-Old RBC Bank Overdraft Suit for $7.5 Million
What PNC Was Accused of Doing
The core allegation was simple. Instead of posting debit card and ATM transactions in the order they happened, PNC processed them from the largest dollar amount to the smallest. Running the biggest charges through first drained the account faster, so smaller transactions that followed bounced and each triggered its own overdraft fee. Customers ended up paying more fees than a chronological ordering would have produced.
PNC was not alone. The claims were consolidated in a large multidistrict litigation before U.S. District Judge James Lawrence King in the Southern District of Florida, styled In re: Checking Account Overdraft Litigation (Case No. 1:09-MD-02036), which produced more than $1 billion in combined settlements against more than 30 banks.3Top Class Actions. PNC Reaches $90M Overdraft Fee Class Action Settlement
Who Was Covered and How Refunds Were Paid
The $90 million settlement class included anyone who held a PNC account accessible by debit card between January 1, 2004, and August 15, 2010, and was charged an overdraft fee resulting from the high-to-low reordering. Several hundred thousand customers were covered nationwide.3Top Class Actions. PNC Reaches $90M Overdraft Fee Class Action Settlement
Payments were automatic. Customers who still had active PNC accounts saw the refund posted as a credit; former customers were mailed checks. Distribution took place in April 2014.1Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. PNC Bank Refunding Customers Hit by Fees
The Separate RBC Bank Settlement
Two class actions against RBC Bank (USA), Dasher v. RBC Bank and Avery v. RBC Bank, had been folded into the same Miami MDL before PNC bought RBC in 2012. As RBC’s successor, PNC took over as defendant.4GovInfo. In Re: Checking Account Overdraft Litigation, Final Judgment
That case settled for $7.5 million and covered former RBC customers who had accounts between October 10, 2007, and March 1, 2012, and were charged overdraft fees from high-to-low posting. PNC funded the settlement and paid notice and administration costs separately, so the full $7.5 million went to the class. Roughly 148,437 former RBC customers were eligible for automatic pro rata payments based on the overdraft fees they had actually paid. Final approval came in 2020.5Golomb Legal. RBC Bank Overdraft Settlement – Section: Settlement Agreement2Bloomberg Law. PNC Resolves Decade-Old RBC Bank Overdraft Suit for $7.5 Million
Other Overdraft Cases Against PNC
The reordering cases did not close the book on PNC overdraft litigation. In February 2020, a separate class action, Komorski v. The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. (Case No. 1:20-cv-01265), was filed in Illinois on a different theory: that PNC charged $36 overdraft fees on transactions that never actually overdrew the account. The complaint alleged PNC’s automated system authorized transactions and assessed fees even when the account had enough money, and called the practice “deceptive, unfair, and unconscionable.” It sought an injunction and restitution.6ClassAction.org. PNC Bank Hit With Class Action Over Improper Overdraft Fees
Attorneys also investigated whether PNC and other banks illegally charged multiple non-sufficient funds fees when a merchant resubmitted the same rejected payment. Because of the arbitration clauses in bank account agreements, that effort was framed as a potential mass arbitration rather than a class action. The investigation was reported as complete by October 2025, with no publicly announced resolution.7ClassAction.org. Unfair Overdraft Protection Fees
PNC’s Current Overdraft Policy
In April 2021, PNC launched a feature it calls Low Cash Mode for Virtual Wallet checking accounts. The tool gives customers at least 24 hours to bring a negative balance back to zero before any overdraft fee is charged, and it lets the customer decide which pending checks and electronic payments should be paid when funds are short. PNC caps overdraft fees at one $36 charge per day under the program and eliminated non-sufficient funds fees entirely.8PNC. Low Cash Mode
During a pilot with roughly 20,000 customers before the national rollout, overdraft fees dropped by more than 60%.9Banking Dive. PNC’s Low Cash Mode Gives Users 24-Hour Overdraft Buffer PNC CEO William Demchak called the industry’s traditional overdraft model “unsustainable.”10PNC Investor Relations. PNC Launches Low Cash Mode to Address $17 Billion in Industry Overdraft Fees The bank says the feature saves customers more than $300 million in overdraft fees a year, and PNC’s overall overdraft and NSF fee revenue fell by roughly half between 2019 and 2021, landing at $269 million.11Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Banks’ Overdraft/NSF Fee Revenues Evolve Along With Their Policies