Mastercard Unit Hit With Lawsuit Over Sharing of Financial Data

Mastercard Inc.-owned Finicity Corp. tricked users of smartphone personal-finance applications into providing it access to their bank account and transaction information, which it then repackaged and sold to lenders and financial institutions without users’ knowledge or consent, a new proposed federal class action said.

Kaitlyn Lawrence alleged that Fincity purported to be a provider of a linking service between financial apps and banks, but in reality acted as an aggregator and seller of financial information that it collected after gaining access by deception to the bank-account login credentials of app users.

The company collected the login credentials by “spoofing” ...