A federal lawsuit alleges that Walmart deceived more than a million delivery drivers by creating deposit accounts without their knowledge or consent, using their Social Security numbers and other personal information.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Monday accused Walmart and payments platform Branch Messenger of costing delivery drivers over $10 million in fees through these accounts since 2021. Walmart, in turn, accused the agency of filing a rushed lawsuit full of errors.
The government's lawsuit says Walmart told drivers, who deliver its shipments to customers' homes, that they would lose their jobs if they didn't use Branch accounts to receive the pay. "Thousands" of drivers had their wages deposited into a Branch account before ever agreeing to terms and conditions, according to the lawsuit.
Drivers who didn't want to — or couldn't figure out how to — access their Branch accounts, the lawsuit says, would lose their Walmart delivery work and often the wages that had been deposited to those Branch accounts, too.
Despite Walmart telling drivers that they could access their earnings instantly, the lawsuit also describes a complex process drivers had to follow to transfer their wages to their usual bank accounts.
The "instant" transfer option required a fee that over the years amounted to more than $10 million paid to Branch, the lawsuit says. Other options would take several days, and both options had daily and monthly limits on how much a driver could transfer.
Walmart, which launched its "Spark Driver" delivery program in 2018, said the consumer bureau never allowed the company "a fair opportunity" to make its case during the investigation.
"The CFPB's rushed lawsuit is riddled with factual errors and contains exaggerations and blatant misstatements of settled principles of law," Walmart's spokesperson said in a statement, adding the company would vigorously defend itself "before a court that, unlike the CFPB, honors the due process of law."
Monday's lawsuit comes days after the consumer bureau sued the operator of Zelle, as well as Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo, "for failing to protect consumers from widespread fraud" at the payment provider.
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