If you closed a Chime checking or savings account since Jan. 1, 2018, and didn’t get your account balance within 14 days, the fintech company may owe you money — up to $150.

Chime customers who closed accounts waited three months or longer to get their refund, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The bureau issued an order that San Francisco-based Chime pay $3.25 million to the CFPB victim’s relief fund as a penalty and at least $1.3 million to affected customers — totaling over $4.5 million.

“Chime’s customers had to wait weeks or months for access to their own money and were forced to use alternative funds to cover their essential expenses,” CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said in a press release.

Here’s what the violation means for you and what one of our CNET Money experts wants you to know.

What did Chime do wrong?

According to the CFPB, Chime was supposed to automatically refund money from closed checking and savings accounts by check if the remaining balance was more than $1. However, in thousands of instances, Chime failed to refund customers within 14 days and sometimes as long as 90 days.

A Chime spokesperson said that “the majority of the delayed refunds were caused by a configuration error with a third-party vendor during 2020 and 2021.”

Those delays could’ve created a critical financial hardship if someone needed the money in the account to pay for basic living expenses like groceries and housing, the CFPB noted. For some folks, the only alternative might’ve been to rely on payday loans or to carry a credit card balance, both of which can involve exorbitantly high interest rates. 

How much does Chime owe you?

If you had a balance less than or equal to $10 and you didn’t receive your refund within 14 days of closing the account, Chime will refund you $25. If you had a balance of more than $10, your refund will be calculated at a 30% annual rate for the time between your refund’s due date and the day you actually received your refund, or $150.

Chime has 10 days to set up a $1.3 million fund for issuing the refunds. You should expect to receive a letter in the mail from Chime if you qualify.

If you’ve moved since closing your Chime checking or savings account and believe you qualify for a payout, it’s best to update your mailing address by contacting Chime’s customer service at 844-244-6363. Within the next seven days, the company is required to publish a telephone number, email and postal addresses specifically to field questions regarding the refund.

It’s worth noting that Chime isn’t a bank; instead, it partners with other banks to offer its products and services. However, its accounts are held by one of two partner banks covered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. 

How to protect yourself from future banking woes

“To mediate risk like the one that has occurred with Chime, I would definitely advise people to consider having emergency savings at a separate bank from where they do their day-to-day banking,” said Bola Sokunbi, a Certified Financial Education Instructor and member of CNET Money’s Expert Review Board.

You may also consider having some money on a preloaded or prepaid card to have access to funds in case of a banking mishap or emergency, she added.

If you haven’t already started saving for the unforeseen, try to start now. Sokunbi recommends creating a line item in your budget to put money toward savings each time you get paid. “Ideally, you want to aim to save at least three to six months of your core or essential living expenses,” she said. That should include housing, transportation, core utilities and medication for you and your household.

Even saving a small amount can help bridge the gap if there’s a temporary issue with your current bank. To be on the safe side, consider keeping this money at a separate high-yield savings account that lets you earn interest and offers easy access to your money.

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A St Petersburg court has seized over €700mn-worth of assets belonging to three western banks — UniCredit, Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank — according to court documents.

The seizure marks one of the biggest moves against western lenders since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine prompted most international lenders to withdraw or wind down their businesses in Russia. It comes after the European Central Bank told Eurozone lenders with operations in the country to speed up their exit plans.

The moves follow a claim from Ruskhimalliance, a subsidiary of Gazprom, the Russian oil and gas giant that holds a monopoly on pipeline gas exports.

The court seized €463mn-worth of assets belonging to Italy’s UniCredit, equivalent to about 4.5 per cent of its assets in the country, according to the latest financial statement from the bank’s main Russian subsidiary.

Frozen assets include shares in subsidiaries of UniCredit in Russia as well as stocks and funds it owned, according to the court decision that was dated May 16 and was published in the Russian registrar on Friday.

According to another decision on the same date, the court seized €238.6mn-worth of Deutsche Bank’s assets, including property and holdings in its accounts in Russia.

The court also ruled that the bank cannot sell its business in Russia; it would already require the approval of Vladimir Putin to do so. The court agreed with Rukhimallians that the measures were necessary because the bank was “taking measures aimed at alienating its property in Russia”.

On Friday, the court decided to seize Commerzbank assets, but the details of the decision have not yet been made public so the value of the seizure is not known. Ruskhimalliance asked the court to freeze up to €94.9mn-worth of the lender’s assets.

The dispute with the western banks began in August 2023 when Ruskhimalliance went to an arbitration court in St Petersburg demanding they pay bank guarantees under a contract with the German engineering company Linde.

Ruskhimalliance is the operator of a gas processing plant and production facilities for liquefied natural gas in Ust-Luga near St Petersburg. In July 2021, it signed a contract with Linde for the design, supply of equipment and construction of the complex. A year later, Linde suspended work owing to EU sanctions.

Ruskhimalliance then turned to the guarantor banks, which refused to fulfil their obligations because “the payment to the Russian company could violate European sanctions”, the company said in the court filing.

The list of guarantors also includes Bayerische Landesbank and Landesbank Baden-Württemberg, against which Ruskhimalliance has also filed lawsuits in the St Petersburg court.

UniCredit said it had been made aware of the filing and “only assets commensurate with the case would be in scope of the interim measure”.

Deutsche Bank said it was “fully protected by an indemnification from a client” and had taken a provision of about €260mn alongside a “corresponding reimbursement asset” in its accounts to cover the Russian lawsuit.

“We will need to see how this claim is implemented by the Russian courts and assess the immediate operational impact in Russia,” it added.

Bayerische Landesbank and Landesbank Baden-Württemberg both declined to comment. Commerzbank did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Italy’s foreign minister has called a meeting on Monday to discuss the seizures affecting UniCredit, two people with knowledge of the plans told the Financial Times.

UniCredit is one of the largest European lenders in Russia, employing more than 3,000 people through its subsidiary there. This month the Italian bank reported that its Russian business had made a net profit of €213mn in the first quarter, up from €99mn a year earlier.

It has set aside more than €800mn in provisions and has significantly cut back its loan portfolio. Chief executive Andrea Orcel said this month that while the lender was “continuing to de-risk” its Russian operation, a full exit from the country would be complicated.

The FT reported on Friday that the European Central Bank had asked Eurozone lenders with operations in the country for detailed plans on their exit strategies as tensions between Moscow and the west grow.

Legal challenges over assets held by western banks have complicated their efforts to extricate themselves. Last month, a Russian court ordered the seizure of more than $400mn of funds from JPMorgan Chase following a legal challenge by Kremlin-run lender VTB. A court subsequently cancelled part of the planned seizure, Reuters reported.

Additional reporting by Martin Arnold in Frankfurt

The US Department of the Treasury this week released its 2024 report on illicit finance, examining threats of money laundering and terrorist financing and its strategies to combat them.

The Treasury cited professional money launderers, financial fraudsters, cybercriminals and those seeking to finance terrorism as ongoing threats to the US financial system.

The 44-page report said anti-money laundering/countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) efforts must continue to adapt in order to be effective.

Among the vulnerabilities cited were obfuscation tools and methods such as mixers and anonymity-enhancing coins, AML/CFT compliance deficiencies at banks and complicit professionals who help facilitate illicit financial activity.

The Treasury cited the prosecution of Binance as an example of its success in supervising virtual asset activities.

Binance failed to prevent criminals, sanctioned entities, and other bad actors from laundering billions of dollars in dirty money, according to court papers. The company pleaded guilty and agreed to pay $4.3 billion in fines and restitution, DL News reported.

Additionally, Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao was sentenced to four months in federal prison for violating US banking laws and fined $50 million.

The US must continue “to invest in technology and training for analysts, investigators, and regulators to develop further expertise related to new technologies, including analysis of public blockchain data,” the report said.

Such expertise is crucial to the government’s ability to develop responses to new ways in which criminals misuse “virtual assets and other new technologies to profit from their illicit activity,” it said.