According to the CFPB, The banking industry charged a total of $32 billion in overdraft fees to consumers in 2012, an increase of more than 60% from $19.9B in 1

According to the CFPB, The banking industry charged a total of $32 billion in overdraft fees to consumers in 2012, an increase of more than 60% from $19.9B in 1990. Part of this increase is that banks have been turning the screws on consumers, increasing the average overdraft fee from $27 in 2007 to $34 today. Those fee increases would be more acceptable if they went to cover the costs associated with those transactions. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Only 14% of the average fee goes toward the cost over covering the overdraft, meaning that 86% of the average overdraft fee is pure profit for the bank. Collusion sucks and keeps the amount that consumers shell out unnaturally high. Anybody that would compete on price gets bought, eventually, by one the big banks (Chase, BoA, Wells Fargo, etc) because they're just buying customers. Your small-town bank that offered cheap checking gets bought by big bad Chase and now you have to pay $35.00 for overdrafts, ad nauseum. Something similar is happening right now with collusion between payments processors (like WePay, Stripe, Balanced) and those same big banks regarding Interchange, "processing fees", etc. The Durbin Amendment, which the author mentioned briefly (but with an outdated reference) was a start in the right direction but there's still a long way to go. More on the Durbin Amendment: http://ink.hackeress.com/2013/08/its-time-for-price-war-in-payments.html http://ink.hackeress.com/2013/08/its-time-for-price-war-in-p...