I was recently contacted by a new online bank that has setup a new kind of checking account that doesn’t have overdraft fees. The bank is Probity Financial Services which is backed by FDIC insured Kennett National Bank. To visit Probity click here.
Now, hopefully most of you reading this will not have a use for this account because this account will only be useful for those of us who are plagued with overdraft fees from their current checking accounts. I’ve never incurred an overdraft fee, and hopefully none of you have, but for those of you who do you realize just how absurd the fees are that banks charge for overdrafting. You could buy a pack of gum and a cup of coffee that puts you in the negative and most banks will charge you somewhere around $50 for those 2 debit card transactions(most banks will charge around $25 per overdraft) that were less than a few bucks.
Once you go negative banks will charge you for every single time you use your debit card no matter how small the charges are. You could literally rack up hundreds of dollars in fees for charges of less than $50. Everyone knows it isn’t right and hopefully banks won’t be able to get away with this sort of practice in the future. But in the meantime Probity Financial Services have setup their no-overdraft checking account for those of us that have run into overdraft problems in the past.
They offer this checking account nationwide and they have no overdraft fees, no transaction fees, and no minimum balance requirements. So what happens if your balance does go negative? Depending on your account you will either be allowed to dip around $100 into a negative balance or your purchases will be rejected.
So what’s the price for this checking account? There’s a $29.95 monthly fee for the account, which is about the cost of 1 overdraft fee at most banks. Again, most people will not have much use for this account, but a good chunk of Americans will save a lot of money with this type of no-overdraft account, even with a $29.95 monthly fee. A free checking account doesn’t really do you any good if you’re racking up huge overdraft fees.
For those of you making new year’s resolutions to cut down on your overdraft charges should consider opening a Probity no-overdraft checking account.