Capital One faces affiliate marketing litigation over allegedly ‘misappropriating influencers’ commissions’

Financial services holding company Capital One Financial (NYSE:COF) faces an affiliate marketing litigation over allegedly “misappropriating influencers’ commissions” through its shopping browser extension.

The litigation relates to Capital One’s free browser extension, Capital One Shopping.

The extension enables consumers to search for online coupon codes for items in their online shopping cart, compare prices, and earn rewards when shopping with more than 100K online merchants.

According to a pretrial order, influencers claim that if a consumer navigates to a merchant’s webpage through their affiliate link and then uses the extension, the extension “artificially simulat[es] a referral click by the consumer”.

The referral click makes it appear as if Capital One was the last-clicked affiliate link that navigated the consumer to the merchant’s webpage.

The content creators allege that the extension was purposely designed in this manner, and they suffered economic injury by not receiving commissions that they were entitled to under their contracts with merchants.

Capital One challenges the claims, arguing that the plaintiffs cannot demonstrate if the extension “actually” diverted any commission.

The case is In re Capital One Financial Corp, Affiliate Marketing Litigation, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Virginia, No. 25-00023, noted Reuters in a June 3 report.