NEW YORK — RushCard, the prepaid debit card company owned by hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, agreed to pay at least $19 million to compensate users who were impacted by the company’s multiday outage last year.
The technical fiasco caused tens of thousands of RushCard customers, who are largely poor and minorities, to be unable to access their money for as long as two weeks. Complaints from the outage clogged up the company’s customer service lines for days.
According to the agreement filed in a New York court as part of a class-action lawsuit, RushCard will pay at least $100 to each user who could not access their funds. That amount can increase to up to $500 if the customer can document any losses they might have experienced because of the outage.
Including earlier fee reimbursements the company has made, RushCard will have paid out more than $19 million, a company spokesman said.
RushCard’s problems started in mid-October, when the company switched payment processors. The transition was botched, and resulting problems caused thousands of RushCard accounts to be frozen.
