Bank of America’s debit card fee will be a bonanza for credit unions.
Citi makes more on some products than Walmart does.
Citi did not want to lose its gravy train, so it demagogued Walmart's application and got it rejected.
So Walmart did an end-around.
I don't blame them.
Time to get out the old checkbook.
There’s some pretty muddled thinking going on in the authors head.
I suppose the next shoe to drop is retailers will start to refuse credit cards and take only debit.
Total hogwash. It started and ended with the banks charging the stores. It’s the banks who want to fill their big pockets by charging both the stores and the card holders. High interest rates, fees, and extra charges every time you turn around and now they’re throwing in yet another charge. Here’s hoping BofA lose so many customers it puts them out of business.
Cash, checks and credit cards don’t have a fee per transaction yet, do they?
Who are they trying to kid? It’s the customer who pays the fee no matter what... whether it goes through the bank or retailer, it’s just a matter of who handles the money.
Exactly. Why blame Walmart and lobbyists? They're doing what they are supposed to do: try to make money for their companies. Blame the politicians willing to be bought. I laugh when politicians blame lobbyists for troubles in politics. If politicians weren't bribable, unethical, lying scum, lobbyists would be powerless.
Good post!
Before debit cards, most people probably paid cash for many routine transactions. Before debit cards were so common I’d typically withdraw $200 for walking around money, but that’s now more like $40 since I use a debit card routinely.
It’d be easy to return to carrying more cash to pay for routine transactions if debit fees seem out-of-line.
Banks are nickle and diming us to death
- Requiring minimimum balances (which they use for their purposes without our reinbursment) or we get a fee (again for them)
- Paying us essentially next to nothing interest rates on our savings (which they use to bolster their ‘investments’)
- More fees for non-bank ATMs
- And more fees on top of those.
And I'm supposed to blame WalMart?
No, I'll stick to blaming the government. WalMart is supposed to look out for WalMart. Dick Durbin is supposed to be our employee, working for us.
Besides, Government raises fees on stuff all the time and that just falls on deaf ears.
The fees charged by banks to retainers for processing debit card purchases were outrageously high, especially considering that it cost next to nothing to process such transactions compared to the customer writing a check. So, the government intervened, even though it was none of the government’s business.
The net result was that the government limited the amount of the transaction fee. So, the banks such as BAC decided to get their pound of flesh elsewhere by instituting a $5 a month charge against checking account customers who used their debit card for one or more purchases each month.
The banks were greedy to begin with, and now that they made a bunch of money off their original greed, they do not want to give up that money and hence, the new debit card fee. As for me, a pox on the major banks and a pox on the Federal government.
Folks need either to not use their debit cards for purchases or switch their checking accounts to regional banks or credit unions which do not charge such fees. That is my plan should Wells Fargo begin charging such fees in my So Cal area, and I have been a 33 year WF customer.
I think a way around these boondoggles, that individual States can use to insulate themselves from irresponsible Washington and the volatile dollar, is to create a public-private partnership with a currency company to issue “debit scrip”.
If a State issues a currency, it must be back by gold and silver. But anyone can issue ‘scrip’, which is a non-legal tender alternative to currency. A State could heavily license, regulate, audit and insure a currency company to issue a heavily controlled currency with voluntary consumer and merchant buy-in.
Any citizen of that State could buy the equivalent of a renewable debit card with US dollars. And if there was massive inflation, it would be a great deal, as US dollars could inflate, but the scrip currency would not, because its prices are fixed and only change once a month.
Unlike a regular debit card, a scrip debit card would have both much better security and be easier to use, needing no special equipment, just a cell phone with a camera. This is because the front of the card has their picture, and the back of the card has an encrypted Data Matrix bar code, which is a public domain bar code that can be read by a cell phone camera.
So if either a merchant or a consumer had a cell phone, a sale could be made through the currency companies phone line and computers, transferring scrip currency from buyer to seller.
The big selling point of scrip is that it is a better deal for both consumer and especially local retailers than by dealing in dollars, much like using coupons. And yet it can be used side-by-side with dollars, whichever one offers the better deal being preferred.
When dollars become too scarce in deflation, as happened at the start of the Great Depression, scrip comes to the rescue, keeping both the market flowing and local government functioning. It was used hundreds of times, and is still used in some places in the US.
So what’s not to like? No matter how chaotic the federal government, how volatile the dollar, shortages and surpluses, scrip fits the bill, and debit scrip has a remarkably low overhead.
I have a stupid question:
My Bank ATM card is also a debit card (I never debit) So, am I going to get whacked with a debit fee because I have the card and only use it as an ATM card?
(that’s to say if my bank jumps onto this bandwagon too)
Well, my bank’s not going to do that. But personally I think you gotta be nuts to use a debit card anywhere than at an ATM anyway. Just use your bank’s card for ATM withdrawals and use a real card for everything else, and the fees go away.