A fuel card is supposed to take a few cents off every gallon. The Federal Trade Commission says that for tens of thousands of FleetCor customers it did the opposite. On September 17 the agency announced that FleetCor Technologies, which now does business as Corpay, and its chief executive Ronald Clarke will pay $100 million to settle an administrative action over hidden and unauthorized fees on the company's fuel cards. The FTC says the money will be used to pay back the business customers who were harmed, and that those customers "overwhelmingly are small businesses." The settlement lands in a week when AAA's national average for diesel hit $6.511 a gallon, the highest price it has ever recorded.
What the FTC says happened
The case goes back to a complaint the FTC filed in federal court in December 2019. FleetCor sold fuel cards under its own Fuelman brand and through co-branded cards, and told prospective customers they would save money, be protected against unauthorized charges, and pay no set-up, transaction or membership fees. According to the FTC, the company then imposed "a broad array of unauthorized fees that its customers never knew about and did not agree to pay, totaling hundreds of millions of dollars and harming tens of thousands of customers."
The mechanics matter, because they describe how a fee gets past a busy owner. The FTC says FleetCor often waited several billing cycles before it started charging many fees, which made them harder to notice. Invoices did not show that fees were being charged at all, so a customer had to go looking in separate account management reports, and even there many fees were buried among other information or not listed. The company also charged late fees to customers who had paid on time, or who had been prevented by FleetCor from paying on time.
One detail from the 2019 complaint will sound familiar to carriers. The FTC alleged that FleetCor charged some customers "high risk" fees for being in the trucking and transportation industry, "even though FleetCor's primary customer base operates in those very industries." As for the savings, the complaint cited an internal analysis requested by Clarke which showed that customers saved, on average, a fraction of a cent per gallon, far below the 5 to 10 cents per gallon the company frequently advertised. The FTC said the fees exceeded whatever savings the cards produced.
The courts have already ruled
This is not a settlement of untested allegations. A federal district court in Georgia entered summary judgment for the FTC on all counts, finding that FleetCor charged hidden or otherwise unauthorized fees and misrepresented the savings and fees tied to its cards. The court's permanent order prohibits the company from billing a customer for any charge unless it has the customer's "express informed consent" and has provided "clear and unavoidable information about the charge." It also bars hiding material information about a charge behind a hyperlink and making deceptive claims about its fuel cards.
In 2026 a federal appeals court upheld the judgment against the company on all counts and affirmed the injunction. It affirmed the judgment against Clarke personally on all but one count and vacated the injunction as it applied to him. Under the new settlement, FleetCor and Clarke have agreed not to oppose putting that injunction against him back in place. "FleetCor deceived its small business customers by promising fuel savings that never materialized, while unfairly charging them hidden and unauthorized fees," said Christopher Mufarrige, director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection. Payments Dive reported that a company spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
What is still unknown about refunds
The $100 million is not in anyone's mailbox yet. The Commission accepted the consent agreement by a 1-0-1 vote, with Chairman Andrew Ferguson recused. The agreement will be published in the Federal Register and opened for 30 days of public comment, and only then will the Commission decide whether to make it final. The FTC has not said who will be eligible, how much an individual customer might receive, or when payments would go out. Once the order is final, each violation can carry a civil penalty of up to $53,088.
The discount is on the sign. The fees are on page three.
A fuel card earns its keep only if the per-gallon discount is bigger than everything the card costs you: monthly and program fees, per-transaction fees, out-of-network surcharges, late fees and credit-risk fees. At $6.51 diesel, a truck burning 400 gallons a week saves $20 with a 5-cent discount. A single $25 account fee or one late fee wipes that out. The FTC's case is a reminder that the number to check is not the advertised discount. It is the total on the statement divided by the gallons you bought.
Checklist
Audit your fuel card, whoever issued it
Pull the last three statements and the separate fee or account-management reports, not just the invoice. List every line that is not fuel: program, membership, transaction, network, risk, paper-statement and late fees.
Work out your real discount: total paid minus what the same gallons would have cost at the pump price, then subtract every fee. If the answer is negative, the card is costing you money.
Check when your payments were posted against when you sent them. Late fees on payments made on time were part of this case. Pay electronically and keep the confirmation.
Look for fees that appeared months after you opened the account. Delayed fees were a core allegation. Dispute in writing anything you did not agree to, and ask the issuer to show where you consented.
If you had a Fuelman or FleetCor co-branded card in past years, keep your statements and watch ftc.gov for the refund process. The FTC never charges a fee to file a claim or receive a refund. Anyone who asks for money to get you a share of this settlement is running a scam.
Sources: Federal Trade Commission, "FleetCor Agrees to Pay $100 Million to Resolve Administrative Action After Federal Court Finds that It Violated the FTC Act by Charging Unauthorized Fees," September 2026; Federal Trade Commission, "FTC Alleges Fuel Card Marketer FleetCor Charged Hundreds of Millions in Hidden Fees," December 2019; FreightWaves, "FleetCor, CEO Agree to Pay $100 Million Over Hidden Fuel-Card Fees," September 18, 2026; Payments Dive, "FleetCor enters $100M settlement," September 2026; AAA national average fuel prices, September 21, 2026.
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