FleetCor pays $100 million over hidden fuel card fees

FleetCor Technologies, Inc., now known as Corpay, Inc., and its CEO Ronald Clarke will pay $100 million after a federal court already found the company violated the FTC Act by charging its fuel-card customers, overwhelmingly small businesses, fees they never knew about and never agreed to. The FTC announced the new order on September 17, 2026.

This case is unusual among FTC settlements for what it is not: a negotiated resolution of disputed allegations. The violation itself was already decided, in court, years ago. What is new is the $100 million, and where it is going.

What the court already found

The FTC first sued FleetCor and Clarke in 2019, in the US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia (*FTC v. FleetCor Technologies, Inc.*, No. 1:19-cv-05727-AT). The complaint said FleetCor marketed fuel cards to small and mid-sized businesses on promises of per-gallon savings and no transaction fees, then imposed a broad array of undisclosed fees anyway, often waiting several billing cycles before starting to charge them so customers would be less likely to notice. Invoices did not show that fees were being charged; other account documents that did often buried the figures among unrelated information or left them out. FleetCor also charged late fees to customers who had paid on time, or whom FleetCor had itself prevented from paying on time.

In 2023, the district court granted the FTC summary judgment for the FTC on all five counts against both FleetCor and Clarke, and entered a permanent injunction against the company. On January 6, 2026, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that judgment and the injunction against FleetCor in full. It affirmed the judgment against Clarke on four of the five counts but vacated it on the fifth, finding the FTC had not shown he had "some knowledge" of the conduct at issue there, and it vacated the injunction as it applied to him personally.

The injunction the courts upheld permanently bars FleetCor from billing a customer for any charge without first getting that customer's express informed consent and giving clear, unavoidable information about it; from hiding material information about a charge behind a hyperlink; and from making deceptive claims about its fuel cards' savings or features.

What is new: the $100 million

What the courts did not decide was how much money should go back to the businesses FleetCor overcharged. That is what the new order, an FTC administrative consent agreement filed September 17, 2026 in the matter *In the Matter of Fleetcor Technologies, Inc.* (Docket No. 9403), settles: FleetCor and Clarke will pay $100 million, which the FTC says will be used to provide redress to the company's business customers. As part of the agreement, Clarke also agreed not to oppose a court reimposing the injunction the 11th Circuit had vacated against him individually.

"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. "In addition to the relief the FTC has obtained in federal court, this order will help return money to the customers the company took advantage of."

The Commission's vote to accept the consent agreement was 1-0-1; Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson is recused. The agreement is not yet final: the FTC will publish it in the Federal Register, after which it is open for public comment for 30 days before the Commission decides whether to finalize it. Once a final order is in place, each violation of it can bring a civil penalty of up to $53,088.

Is there a refund

Not yet, and there is no claim form to fill out today. The $100 million has not been distributed, and the FTC has not said when or how a redress program will open. If one does, it will appear on the agency's refund-programs page and on FTC refunds, the tracker this desk keeps for programs actually distributing money.

That absence of an admission is, in most FTC settlements, the point: what a settlement without an admission means for a case where liability was never tested. FleetCor's case is the exception that explains the rule. Here, a court found the violation years ago and an appeals court upheld that finding; the only thing left to settle was the size of the check.