Ohio will receive part of $10M multistate settlement, Ohio AG says

Oct. 19—Ohio will receive part of a $10 million multistate settlement with payment processor ACI Worldwide following a testing error in 2021 that led to the attempted unauthorized withdrawal of $2.3 billion from the accounts of 477,000 mortgage holders nationwide.

Ohio's share is $342,803, according to an announcement earlier this week from Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost.

"The ACI error jeopardized Ohioans' financial stability and caused undue stress," Yost said. "This settlement ensures that this company is held responsible for committing an error of this magnitude and that safeguards are put in place to prevent similar incidents in the future."

ACI Payments, a subsidiary of ACI Worldwide Corp., serves as a payment processor for various third-party clients, including mortgage servicers, the statement said.

Nationstar Mortgage, known publicly as Mr. Cooper, offered ACI's Speedpay product to customers to electronically schedule mortgage payments through the Automated Clearing House (ACH) system, according to Yost.

On April 23, 2021, ACI a test on the Speedpay platform submitted live consumer data into the ACH system, which led to the withdrawal of mortgage payments from nearly 500,000 customers, including about 13,000 in Ohio.

There were 1.4 million transactions totaling $2.3 billion processed affecting the Mr. Cooper customers. The transactions either were later reversed or were unsuccessful. However, some customers could not access the funds in question, leading to overdraft fees or insufficient funds.

Affected consumers have received compensation from ACI as part of other related settlements.

As part of the settlement agreement, ACI must divide its testing or development work from its consumer payment systems and use "artificially generated data for testing purposes" instead of real consumer data.