…compared to bounced check fees and overdraft protection. The payday lending industry has been making this point for years, but now economists are catching up. This article on the blog of the Left-wing magazine Mother Jones discusses research by East Carolina University Professor Marc Anthony Fusaro.
From the article:
Fusaro looked at overdraft protection as a form of a short-term loan and found that people who occasionally bounce checks (between 1 and 10 times a year) pay interest rates exceeding 6,000 percent. Chronic bouncers in the study, who make up a small percentage of bank customers, paid more than $3,000 in fees annually for the privilege. The average size of the overdraft was pretty small, between $90 and $300. The most extreme case in the study was one poor soul who had a $3 overdraft outstanding for one day, which resulted in an intereste rate of 260,245 percent, a hefty surcharge for using a debt card for a latte.
While these small fees don’t translate into a ton of money for most consumers, they add up mightily for the banks, and over time, can help trap people in debt that’s hard to escape. The banks don’t make it easy, as they intentionally manipulate check-clearing to encourage people to bounce a lot of checks. (CRL says the software vendors who sell these systems to banks promise to increase revenue from overdraft fees by as much as 400 percent.)
6000% interest rates? $3000 in fees?
