Snap Finance Must Cancel $662 Million Owed by 303,223 Lease-to-Own Customers in 17 States, and They Get to Keep the Merchandise
A total of 148,295 Texas accounts, 62,753 in Florida and 92,175 more in 15 other states no longer owe Snap Finance for goods leased years ago. Under a settlement with 17 state attorneys general that took effect Oct. 21, the company must cancel $662,102,518 in remaining balances on 303,223 lease-to-own accounts.
The customers also keep the merchandise. Snap gives up its ownership claim, so there is nothing to return and no further payments to make.
Who qualifies for the cancellation
The relief covers people who signed Snap lease-to-own agreements from 2017 through 2022 in one of the participating states, whose accounts Snap had charged off and still controlled in November 2025, according to the assurance of voluntary compliance posted by the Nebraska attorney general’s office.
The 17 states are Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming. Iowa and Nebraska led the negotiations.
No claim form is involved. The Oklahoma attorney general’s announcement says Snap will cancel the lease payments automatically and that affected residents will not owe further payments and can keep the merchandise.
The state-by-state numbers
An appendix to the agreement breaks the forgiveness down by state. Texas dominates, with 148,295 accounts and $344,486,039 canceled, more than half of the total. Florida follows with 62,753 accounts and $135,643,677, and Georgia with 31,647 accounts and $65,097,488.
The other states, by accounts and dollars canceled:
- Oklahoma: 9,439 accounts, $18,050,323
- Arkansas: 9,352 accounts, $18,449,844
- Utah: 8,913 accounts, $16,758,262
- Louisiana: 6,259 accounts, $13,249,796
- Kentucky: 6,046 accounts, $12,313,492
- Mississippi: 4,266 accounts, $8,467,609
- Missouri: 3,707 accounts, $6,979,354
- Kansas: 2,996 accounts, $5,143,468
- West Virginia: 2,505 accounts, $4,442,388
- Idaho: 1,846 accounts, $3,404,135
- Wyoming: 1,619 accounts, $2,745,697
- Nebraska: 1,349 accounts, $2,652,091
- Iowa: 1,287 accounts, $2,367,148
- North Dakota: 944 accounts, $1,851,707
Across all 303,223 accounts, the canceled balance averages about $2,184 per account.
What the states said Snap did wrong
The Nebraska attorney general’s office said investigators found misleading lease disclosures, confusing payment terms and unclear return and termination processes. Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond said Snap misled consumers and withheld pertinent information about their contracts.
Snap denies violating any law and entered the agreement without admitting liability, the document says.
Beyond the cancellations, Snap agreed to change how it does business. The Nebraska office lists a ban on misleading slogans, full disclosure of lease terms and costs, no false threats of seizure and no claims that leasing will raise credit scores, along with merchant training and three years of annual compliance reports.
New rules for future Snap leases
The agreement goes into detail on how Snap must handle leases from here on. It restricts “same as cash” style advertising, requires disclosures before a customer signs and sets rules for what the lease itself must contain. Snap must give customers three business days’ notice before changing a payment method, and the agreement limits what the company can say about repossession.
The document also addresses late deliveries and repairs, and it protects a customer’s right to end a lease and surrender the item. Those terms apply in the 17 participating states. The 180-day deadline to put them in place runs to about April 19, 2027, and the obligations in those sections expire five years after the Oct. 21 effective date.
For shoppers who still lease through Snap at a store checkout, those changes are the part of the settlement that will matter after the old balances are wiped away.
Snap also pays $2.75 million to the states, with $250,000 each to Iowa and Nebraska and $150,000 to each of the other 15, within 60 days. The agreement says the payments are not a fine or penalty, and the money goes to the states, not to customers.
What it means for credit reports
The agreement cancels the debt and transfers ownership, but it does not spell out any change to how the accounts are reported to credit bureaus, according to the document. It bars Snap from advertising that lease-to-own agreements can help raise a customer’s credit rating.
The Oklahoma and Nebraska announcements do not describe a separate notice to customers, and the agreement does not set a date for one. The Nebraska office says only that affected consumers will receive ownership of their merchandise and will no longer owe payments.
A roundup of new settlements for the week of Nov. 2 by OpenClassActions listed the Snap agreement among government settlements with no claim form. The site’s detailed summary notes the average forgiveness of roughly $2,180 per account.
The site reported on a similar debt cancellation earlier this week, when Credit Acceptance agreed to erase $634 million in car-loan debt under a settlement with 41 attorneys general. For Snap’s 303,223 customers, the payoff is simple: the balance is gone and the goods stay home.
Get stories like this by email. Sign up for The Parent Diaries Letter.
This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
Image: Nanilluc – CC BY-SA 4.0/Wikimedia Commons
