Wells Fargo & Co. asked a federal appeals court to throw out a judge's order to pay California customers $203 million for manipulating debit-card transactions to boost overdraft fees, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Wells Fargo said that customers cannot sue under California law over how the bank deals with debit-card transactions because its practices are regulated by federal laws that allow Wells Fargo to determine its own methods for calculating fees. Customers alleged in a 2007 complaint that San Francisco-based Wells Fargo changed the way it treated daily debit transactions and cash withdrawals in 1999 so that transactions with the highest dollar amount posted first, rather than in the order they occurred.
