Your Equifax settlement payment won't be $125 because too many people wanted the money

• Equifax started sending out payments to people affected by its massive 2017 data breach.
• But, as consumers quickly realized, the settlement payments are way less than the expected $125 per consumer.
• People have gotten as little as $5.21 because of the sheer number of people who filed claims for the money.

People expecting a payday over the 2017 Equifax data breach got their checks — and a unfortunate surprise — this week.

Equifax started distributing settlement payments Monday to US consumers whose data was breached as a part of the 2017 Equifax Data Breach.

But, as people quickly realized, the payments hitting bank accounts are far less than the initially expected $125 per customer.

People have said they've gotten measly payouts of $5.21 and $2.64. One lucky consumer said he got $22.82 from Equifax.

In 2019, a settlement over the breach — which revealed the private information of 147 million Americans — required the credit bureau to compensate each victim starting at $125 and up to $20,000, Insider previously reported.

Equifax agreed to a $700 million settlement over the privacy breach, but $425 million of that was set aside to repay consumers as a restitution fund.

"These consumer payments are being drawn from the $425 million restitution fund that was agreed to by the Federal Trade Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 50 U.S. states and territories, the attorneys representing the consumer class action plaintiffs, and Equifax," a statement from Equifax released Monday said. "The restitution fund was created to pay for: three-bureau credit monitoring for U.S. consumers whose information was impacted in the 2017 breach; actual out-of-pocket losses related to the breach; and other consumer benefits such as identity restoration services."

According to the fine print of the agreement, just $31 million of that money was being used for the reimbursement pool, and — if more than $31 million in claims were filed to the bureau by the deadline — "all payments ... will be lowered and distributed on a proportional basis."

That means there was only enough money at the start for 248,000 people to get the full $125 (If all 147 million Americans tried to get their money, each would have only gotten 21 cents).

While there hasn't been any official confirmation of the total number of people who wanted their settlement, the small payouts suggest that far more than 248,000 people submitted claims to Equifax, resulting in smaller totals for each person.

The deadline to apply for a settlement payout was in January 2020.