In 2003, Congress passed the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act — FACTA — as an amendment to the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Among its provisions was a simple rule: printed receipts at the point of sale cannot display more than the last five digits of a card number, and cannot display the expiration date at all.

The reasoning was equally simple. Receipts get lost, thrown in trash cans, and left on counters. Full card numbers on a paper receipt are a low-tech but effective tool for identity thieves. Truncation (showing only the last four or five digits) makes the receipt useless to anyone who finds it.

The rule, stated plainly

If you pay with a credit or debit card and the merchant prints a receipt, that receipt may show:

  • No more than the last 5 digits of your card number (most show 4)
  • No expiration date whatsoever

That's it. Anything more is a violation. The law applies to any "electronically printed" receipt at a point of sale — not handwritten receipts, not emailed receipts (those have separate rules under other laws).

What the penalties look like

FACTA is a strict liability statute, which means intent doesn't matter. If the receipt violates the rule, the violation occurred — regardless of whether the retailer knew, intended it, or was using outdated software they forgot to update.

Statutory damages are $100 to $1,000 per violation — per transaction. In a class action involving a busy retailer, that adds up quickly. Courts have certified classes covering every customer who received a non-compliant receipt during the violation period, which can be millions of people and billions in potential exposure.

Why retailers settle: Even if a retailer is confident they'd win at trial, the cost of litigating a nationwide class action through discovery and trial often exceeds a settlement. FACTA cases frequently settle for a few million dollars rather than risk a much larger verdict.

Why do retailers keep violating it?

The law has been on the books since 2003. The compliance requirement isn't ambiguous. So why does it keep generating class actions?

Usually because of software. A retailer upgrades their point-of-sale system, rolls out new receipt templates, or changes payment processors — and somewhere in the configuration, truncation gets disabled or the expiration date field gets added back. The violation often runs for months before anyone catches it, affecting every transaction during that window.

It's less "retailer decides to break the law" and more "retailer's IT team made a configuration error and nobody ran a compliance check." That doesn't make it legal. It does explain why large, otherwise reputable chains end up as defendants.

Sprouts is a recent example

Sprouts Farmers Market is currently settling a FACTA class action covering customers who used credit, debit, or EBT cards between August 2020 and April 2023. The allegation: their receipts printed too many card digits. The settlement: a cash payment for anyone who filed a claim with a qualifying receipt from that period. Classic FACTA pattern.

Check our database — we track active FACTA settlements alongside data breach, consumer protection, and other class action cases. If you shopped at an affected retailer during the relevant period, you may have a claim even if the violation sounds trivial.

The bottom line on FACTA

FACTA violations are real, the settlements are legitimate, and the payouts — while usually modest per person — are worth filing for. The cases don't require you to have experienced any actual harm from the receipt. The violation itself is the basis for the claim. File if you're eligible. It takes ten minutes.