360 Savings Account Lawsuit Claims Capital One Deliberately Hid Existence of Higher-Yield 360 Performance Savings Accounts [UPDATE]

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Capital One faces a proposed class action lawsuit over its decision in 2019 to suddenly stop offering its high-interest 360 Savings Account to new customers and begin offering “360 Performance Savings” accounts with a much higher interest rate. 

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The 15-page Capital One lawsuit states that the company, around September 2019, “abruptly and without notice” stopped offering to new California customers its 360 Savings account, which when launched had a 1.00 percent interest rate, and instead began to offer a “new, virtually identical” account with a similar name. This new account, the 360 Performance Savings account, was advertised as a “high yield” online account that offered a “significantly higher interest rate,” 1.90 percent, than the former 360 Savings account, the case says. 

According to the complaint, Capital One “strategically and deliberately” attempted to hide the existence of the new, higher-interest 360 Performance Savings account from 360 Savings accountholders “for its own financial gain.” 

“No rational consumer would elect to receive less interest in the 360 Savings account when they could simply transfer their deposits to a nearly identical account, yet plaintiff and other Class members continue to do so,” the filing relays. “This demonstrates how deceptive Capital One’s conduct is.” 

Per the suit, the “vast difference” in interest rates between the 360 Savings account and 360 Performance Savings account “only worsened over time,” with the former turning into a “very low interest [account], even while relevant benchmarks such as the Federal Reserve rate increased.” By May 2023, the interest rate on Capital One’s 360 Performance Savings account hit 3.75 percent, while the company decreased the once-1.00 percent rate on 360 Savings accounts to only 0.30 percent, the lawsuit claims. 

“Currently, the rate paid on the 360 Performance Savings account is 4.35%, whereas the rate paid on the 360 Savings account has remained at 0.30%,” the complaint states. 

The case alleges Capital One deliberately never told the plaintiff or any other 360 Savings accountholder that it had created a “superior savings account with an almost-identical name” or that it was ending new access to the 360 Savings account. Similarly, Capital One never mentioned that it was “providing a superior product with a higher interest rate to new accountholders” or that 360 Savings accountholders could “easily take advantage” of the better interest rates of the 360 Performance Savings account by transferring their 360 Savings deposits, the filing claims. 

“As long as the 360 Savings accountholders maintained their deposits in that account, Capital One would be paying less in interest than if they simply transferred to a 360 Performance Savings account,” the case summarizes. 

The lawsuit accuses Capital One of breaching its contractual promise of “high-interest” savings for 360 Savings accountholders by failing to offer the higher, available interest rate, and of exercising its discretion “in bad faith” by creating a better-yielding savings account without notice while decreasing the interest rate on 360 Savings accounts. 

“Plaintiff and the Class were significantly harmed by [Capital One’s] conduct, including through lost interest payments that should have been paid on their deposits when Capital One was ready, willing, and able to pay those higher rates on the virtually identical ‘high interest’ 360 Performance Savings account,” the complaint reads. 

The lawsuit looks to cover all consumers in California who have ever held a Capital One 360 Savings account. 

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