The Dave banking app didn’t deliver promised cash advances and charged customers hidden fees, according to the report a Federal Trade Commission complaint filed Tuesday.

“Dave lured consumers who were living paycheck to paycheck with false claims of large advances, then reached into their pockets to give him a so-called ‘tip,'” said Samuel Levine, director of the Consumer Protection Bureau. from the FTC.

Dave’s, a publicly traded company that describes itself as a “neo-bank,” currently advertises “instant … up to $500” cash advances, but it only offered the full amount a small percentage of the time, and most customers received much smaller amounts such as $25. , the FTC said.

Instead, the FTC said the company charged its customers hidden fees, including an “Express Fee” of between $3 and $25 to receive money and a suggested “tip” of 15 percent.

Dave included a picture of a child with food and the text “Feeding America” ​​when asking for a “tip,” suggesting the money would go to charity, but the FTC said the company only donated 10 cents for each “tip “.

Dave did not immediately respond to ConsumerAffairs’ emailed request for comment.

It was hard for me to leave

According to the FTC, Dave described the customers he targeted as “financially vulnerable” or “financially struggling,” including those with higher expenses than their income, minimal savings, and who often do overdrafts from their banks.

The FTC said Dave also made it difficult for customers to leave.

“I tried to leave but they literally won’t let me leave. I had to fight them to delete my account and kept getting charged the membership fee… LEAVE ME ALONE. I HATE the DAVE,” one customer wrote. , according to the FTC complaint.

The FTC fines companies to pay victims of predatory cash advance companies, which means Dave’s alleged victims can receive compensation.

Earlier this week, the FTC ordered more than $17 million to victims of cash advance app Brigit, which signed up customers with false promises of “instant” cash advances that trapped them in monthly subscriptions.

This is not the first time that Dave has been in the crosshairs of regulations.

In July, the company responded to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s tightening of regulations on payday loans.

“We are closely monitoring the CFPB’s recently proposed interpretive ruling related to the wage advance and earned income access (“EWA”), a model that Dave was originally founded on, but passed on from early 2022 due to the lack of certainty in in terms of regulations,” Dave’s chief executive Jason Wilk said in a statement.