Bank of America to charge $5 monthly debit card fee

[AGDee]

Originally Posted by MidwayManiac

Starting October 1, the government will regulate how much banks can charge merchants for debit card transactions. This is the so-called Durbin Amendment to the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory act passed by the last Congress in 2010. I think the debit card fee is a reaction from the banks to the lost revenue due to the new law--a law sold, by the way, as "consumer protection." I think you can view this as an unintended yet inevitable consequence of the government intervening in the market. Fees that previously were paid by the merchants have been shifted to the consumer, which seems to be a rather perverted kind of protection.

The non-regulation led to the insane interest rates, crazy over the limit charges (sometimes 3-5 times the amount you went over), the shady practices banks used in processing transactions to their advantage, etc. Banks are constantly looking for ways to get money from the little guy without the little guy realizing what's going on. If they'd stop trying to rip people off, the regulations wouldn't be necessary.