- On Tuesday, the CFPB sued Capital One, accusing the company of "cheating" customers out of $2 billion in interest.
- On Wednesday, the company's business account holders faced a system outage, which continued into Friday.
- Capital One shares have still managed to climb, with the stock up almost 10% for the week.
It's been a tough week for Capital One, with a lawsuit and system outage hitting back-to-back as other big US banks enjoy positive headlines around stellar fourth-quarter earnings.
On Tuesday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sued the bank, accusing it of "cheating" millions of customers out of $2 billion in interest.
The CFPB claims the company promised consumers that its signature "360 Savings" account provided one of the "best" and "highest" interest rates, but froze that rate at a low level even as rates rose around the country.
At the same time, Capital One created a nearly identical product, called "360 Performance Savings," which paid out significantly more in interest — more than 14 times the 360 Savings rate at one point, the lawsuit claims.
The CFPB says the bank kept 360 Savings accountholders in the dark about the new product, failing to notify them about the better-paying accounts and resulting in billions in potential lost interest payments.
"The CFPB is suing Capital One for cheating families out of billions of dollars on their savings accounts," CFPB's Rohit Chopra said in a statement. "Banks should not be baiting people with promises they can't live up to."
In a statement to Business Insider, a spokesperson for the bank said:
"We are deeply disappointed to see the CFPB continue its recent pattern of filing eleventh hour lawsuits ahead of a change in administration. We strongly disagree with their claims and will vigorously defend ourselves in court."
"Our flagship 360 Performance Savings product was marketed widely, including on national television, with the simplest and most transparent terms in the industry."
Adding to the bank's troubles this week, business account holders faced a widespread system outage starting on Wednesday and continuing into Friday.
The disruption impacted the bank's ability to process deposits, payments, and transfers, including direct deposits.
As of 12:47 PM Eastern Time on Friday, there were 3,052 reports of outages, with most regarding issues with deposits, according to data from Downdetector.
The company says the outage was a result of a technical issue with one of its service providers.
"We're working closely with our provider to resolve this issue and restore processing as quickly as possible. We expect services to gradually begin to return to normal throughout today and the majority of issues to be resolved by Friday morning," the company said in an email to customers on Thursday night.
Despite the drama-filled week, Capital One's stock has managed to climb. Shares rose 2% on Friday, bringing the weekly surge to almost 10%. The stock was trading around $192 a share Friday afternoon.
Other big banks, like Wells Fargo, Citi, and JPMorgan have posted similarly large gains for the week after reporting strong earnings.
Capital One will report results for the final quarter of 2024 on January 21.