In consolidated class actions in Brooklyn federal court (Kelwin Inkwell LLC v. PNC Merchant Services, E.D.N.Y. No. 1:17-cv-06255, and Choi’s Beer Shop LLC v. PNC Merchant Services, No. 1:19-cv-05768), merchants alleged the company charged unanticipated and excessive fees, that sales agents aggressively promoted the service while misrepresenting the governing contract terms, that fees were added or marked up after signing without disclosure, and, most remarkably, that new customers were automatically opted out of receiving itemized monthly billing statements, surrendering the detail only on request. Think about what that combination accomplishes if proven: the overbilling lives in the line items, and the line items live in a document the merchant no longer receives. In 2021, after what class counsel called four years of hard-fought litigation, PNC agreed to a $14.5 million settlement covering more than 200,000 merchants, paying up to $10 million in cash for annual fees, early termination fees, and paper statement fees charged between October 2011 and the settlement date. PNC admitted no wrongdoing, and no court ruled on the merits.

The settlement’s practice changes read like a confession written in the negative: PNC agreed to give customers additional notice before imposing annual fees, to refrain from charging early termination fees, and to improve its fee disclosures for five years. Each promised reform marks the exact spot where the complaint said the harm lived.

No FTC actions, state attorney general enforcement, or card network fines against the merchant unit were located. The deductions are earned by merchant class litigation: the consolidated cases settled for $14.5 million in 2021, and a 2017 class action, Healing for the Abused Woman Ministries v. PNC Merchant Services, alleging systematic overbilling beyond the amounts permitted in merchant agreements. A familiar name appears on the plaintiffs’ side: Webb, Klase & Lemond, the same firm behind the $40 million Wells Fargo Merchant Services settlement in our Wells Fargo rating. When one law firm builds a practice out of suing bank processors over the same fee categories, that is a pattern about the industry, not just one defendant. The parent bank’s regulatory history outside merchant processing is displayed, not scored, consistent with every bank processor in this series.

The complaint record cannot be read in one place, and that itself is scored: the merchant unit’s BBB profile carries no rating and a wrong-address note, so the documented themes come from litigation records, review platforms, and settlement commentary. Those themes: contracts merchants describe as intentionally deceptive and not fully disclosed, accounts that could not be cancelled, billing that continued after cancellation, fees under unexplained labels, and Clover support holds documented at two hours. On the other side of the ledger, PNC’s in-house support is documented as responsive and genuinely willing to negotiate, which earns the resolution points it earns. The pattern that remains: the merchants who got relief are disproportionately the ones who had professional help pushing.

Full public-company disclosure applies through PNC Financial Services Group, with stable leadership. The merchant-facing deductions are heavy for one reason above all: the litigated allegation that itemized statements were withheld by default is the deepest transparency failure a processor can be accused of, because every other form of disclosure is theater if the statement never arrives. Add unpublished custom pricing documented as inconsistent even within a single client’s accounts, and the unreadable BBB profile, and the strong corporate disclosure sits atop weak merchant disclosure. The settlement’s five-year fee-disclosure commitments are noted, and merchants should treat their expiration date as a calendar item, not a technicality.

Is PNC Merchant Services a good processor? Based on the documented record, PNC Merchant Services scored 49 out of 100 under the published weAudit Rating Methodology, a band reserved for companies whose documented record warrants extreme caution: a $14.5 million settlement over fees the suits said didn’t match the contract, allegations that itemized statements were withheld from new customers by default, and liquidated damages exit clauses on Fiserv paper. The bank is familiar; the documented conduct is what the score measures.

A 49 lands in a band our methodology reserves for companies whose documented record warrants extreme caution. The record here is unusually specific about how the harm worked, which makes the countermeasures unusually specific too. Three things to do this week: