The stock of Wells Fargo & Co (NYSE:WFC) closed at $52.71 gaining 0.32% in yesterday’s trading session. This bank is going through a difficult time. It has been accused of misleading a large number of merchants eventually charging them unauthorized fees. This has led to the filing of a federal lawsuit against the provider’s joint venture with payment processor First Data Corp FDC.

The reason behind coming up with the Wells Fargo Merchant Services was to offer assistance to small businesses as well as a wide array of other merchants countrywide. It has become a lot easier for them to process their debit and credit card transactions. However, the merchants launched complaints. They said that the provider had frustrated them after it failed to keep its promise to serve them with a transparent pricing policy.

Wells Fargo & Co has been allegedly overbilling merchants for its services for quite a long period of time. Its merchants have expressed concerns in a number of instances but they fell on deaf ears. They were uncomfortable with the fact that the company had been charging them with unanticipated fees but every time it ran to its own defense terming them “interchange charges.”The venture was indeed the one making profit out of the fee but each time it said that it was charged by some credit card network.

The 63-page contract that was framed by the company needed to be signed by merchants. This contract was rather complex such that a lot of the merchants found it difficult to understand it properly. They just realized it when it was too late that they had tied themselves down. The unauthorized monthly charges that followed were more than they could take.

A Wells Fargo spokeswoman, Sara Hassell opines, “We deny the claims and plan to defend against the misrepresentations outlined in the lawsuit.” The spokesman for First Data, Mark Murphy was expected to give his comments in regards to the matter. However, it did not turn out that way after he declined to make his comments.