Summary
The Biden Administration, through the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), is capping overdraft fees at $5, down from $35, starting Oct. 1, 2025.
The move, targeting “junk fees,” could save U.S. consumers $5 billion annually.
The CFPB suggests banks adopt cost-based fees or offer overdraft credit lines while disclosing interest rates.
Industry groups oppose the rule, and its future is uncertain under a Republican-controlled Congress and the incoming Trump administration.
If they are truly junk fees then the cap should be $0.
$0 would probably mean there’s no way it sticks.
If the fee is zero, the bank will just stop giving people over deaft which is how it should work anyway.
Only time I over drafted is because of a mistake.
But people also use overdraft as payday loan and these fees target them. So bank will need some fee to enable these “loans”
Why do we need to prevent payday loans in this manner? seems like the best way to have them. just put an upper bound and a interest rate on negative balances over a month old. you know… just like how a credit card works.
Because banks don’t want this viewed as payday loans and the regulations it would attract.
They are punishing bad behavior is better justification for the extraction operation.
what are credit cards if not payday loans. and you didnt touch on anything relevant to my point. no one should gives a shit what banks think. its about whats good for the community.
you were asserting that the fees are to prevent people from using them as pay day loans. but banks already have that system its a credit card. why not just have over drafts tie into the credit card system and avoid this whole set of nonsense.
Credit cards have zero interest if I pay off the balance in full each month. That is not an option for payday loans.
Yes, thats why low limit credit cards are a better model than payday loans and was my point for both payday loans and overdraft fees.
People who need pay day loans can’t get from credit cards… That’s kinda the entire business model here
yes, I’m not talking about how it currently works. I’m giving you a thought experiment to reason through. things you should be asking yourself:
- what are the purpose of credit cards? what are the purpose of pay day loans?
- why do we restrict people from having credit cards? what purpose does it serve?
- why is having high interest rate payday loans for the people we prevent from having low limit credit cards in any universe a reasonable or justifiable concept.
- overdraft fees in no way help anyone, not even the banks it just makes them adversarial.
I’m asserting that a low limit credit card is functionality better for everyone than allowing predatory pay day loan services or overdraft fees to exist. both models fundamentally work the same way you spend money that isnt yours and pay it back later at an exorbitant fee if longer than X.
This is how progress dies, by half assing everything and blaming it on speculation that it couldn’t work if done right.
I’m 50/50 on that. I agree, but it’s more complicated in action than just saying “the fee is now zero.” This isn’t the first time Biden has tried to get rid of overdraft fees. Courts strike it down.
Courts struck down the
antiabortionforced birth legislation for decades until repeatedly failing finally worked out for the religious cultists.Real change doesn’t happen through compromise.
Real change doesn’t happen through compromise.
I get the strong feeling You’ve never had to negotiate anything important in your life. Idealism is not reality. It’s fun to daydream about though.
“Alwaya start negotiations with your final offer.”
-you
Point proven.
certainly. nothing happens gradually its always super sudden. half a loaf sucks so bad to. waaayyyy better to have no loaf. at least with no loaf you can imagine how nice the whole loaf will be without that pesky half a loaf bringing you back to reality. Man I am so happy to have 4 years of no loaf and I hope no one ruins it with a bunch of half a loaves 4 years from now. /s
That isn’t progress though, that is just surviving. It is understandable, but it is important to understand that it is not progress.
not surviving is not going to make progress but progress can be made while one survives. You don’t need to not get the loaf to still go for the full loaf but it will be easier to start from a base of half a loaf and try to get more. Its the folks who want many loaves who want to convince other folks that none is better than half.
it will be easier to start from a base of half a loaf and try to get more.
In reality the people who just want to survive will accept the half loaf and progress stagnates.
do you expect that starving them will get them to do something that will cause progress? Won’t progress suffering even more with the full loaf? Don’t you see at all who actually wins in the no loaf scenario because not everyone has no loaf or half a loaf at any time. Personally from my experience there is no need to prime folks greed. I find 99% of people will always go for more and the few that don’t are generally better when they can be that way than forced to pretend they are making progress. Its one reason I am a big universal income proponent. There is the myth that everyone will sit on their ass and do nothing but in actuality only a very very small percent of folks will do that and those folks likely cause more harm than good when forced to participate.
I like how they put “cracking down” in quotes.
Isn’t the CFPB one of the agencies that conservatives are trying to get rid of?
Waaay back in the 80s I had a US Bank account called “The Only Account”. It was a savings and checking account joined together. The checking account always had a zero balance. When I wrote a check the bank transferred money from savings to checking and paid the check. Why didn’t they just have one account, I wondered? They said it was because federal banking regulations didn’t allow them to pay interest on checking accounts. So they had this nifty workaround. Fine by me! They didn’t charge me anything for each check, just a small monthly account fee which I don’t remember, and I never had to balance my checking account because it never had a balance, or worry about moving money into it. It was perfect!
Flash forward to the 90s when I got married and moved from Portland OR to Seattle. I walked into a US Bank to find out if I had to do anything to move my Only Account to their branch.
“Only Account”? the employee asked. “We don’t have anything like that.”
“Oh yes you do,” I retorted. “Here’s my US Bank checkbook. It says Only Account right on it.”
“Ohhhh… that’s US Bank of Oregon, we’re US Bank of Washington.” At this point she started talking to me like I was in kindergarten. “You see, we’re like cousins - same family but not the same company. We have different rules.”
“That’s interesting,” I said. “The New York Stock Exchange thinks it’s ONE company called US Bank (symbol USB). I’ve personally owned the stock myself.”
After some more mumbling I made her give me back the check I had given her for deposit and the application I had partially filled out, and I just took my money to my wife’s credit union, where we’ve had a joint account ever since.
The point of this story is that banks don’t need to create an overdraft account for you, deposit money into it as a loan when you overdraw a check, charge you interest on the loan, and charge you $15 or whatever for every time they do this. I don’t know if US Bank of Oregon still has the Only Account or if they wised up to the missed profit potential and joined the “Oh I’m sorry we can’t do that” crowd, but the truth is that banks CAN dispense with all the overdraft nonsense, BECAUSE THEY WERE DOING IT 40 YEARS AGO AND IT WORKED GREAT.
You’ll never guess who these fees impact the most.
Great another fee that will be reversed in 3 weeks. How about doing this shit four years ago?I should not let my bad mood make me post reactionary nonsense without looking into it further.
No you were right, cfpb is under the executive, he could have done this day one.
Only if you ignore the fact that he tried such tactics with the EPA to curb emissions and the courts ruled they didn’t have lawful rights to make those changes without them being directly voted on by Congress. Similar happened with him trying to expand student loans forgiveness with the SAVE act within the department of education. Both of those fall under the executive branch, yet neither got through. Which just goes to show this being under the executive branch does not mean they can get it past the courts unless the conservative judges that blocked those allow it.
Except the court has upheld both qualified immunity and presidential absolute immunity; meaning Biden could order the executive to ignore the court as past presidents have done.
That’s not what immunity is. It would make him immune from prosecution for attempting to perform the act, but the act would still be stopped if they don’t want it to occur.
Ignore the court as past presidents have done? Can you name one time this has happened, because unless you are referring to Abraham Lincoln in the 1800s who was never challenged, I don’t know of any such events.
The President is not a king
Andrew Jackson for one. But no, with immunity the act can be done and there’s not much anyone except Congress can do.
So your saying President: “Banks you can only charge $5” Courts: that’s not constitutional JP Morgan: “fuck off president”
What is the country going to take them to court and lose?.. who already would have stated the outcome of the case before it started
Arrest the bank president, hold them indefinitely without trial. Executive is the enforcement branch, they decide what actually gets done.
H.R.4277 - Overdraft Protection Act of 2021
He started this in 2021. Remember he had to start his 4 years trying to wrangle inflation going buck wild. The guy’s not the greatest possible president but he has been working towards shit like this for all 4 years. What we should ask is why did it take so long to pass Congress… Because if the effective start date of a bill occurs during their presidency the Republicans can take credit. Kind of like how Trump changed the sentences of those 3000+ people, and then Biden got the blame by Republicans for pardoning the 1500 left as per the agreement written and signed in March 2020.
why did it take so long to pass Congress
H.R.4277 never did pass Congress; it didn’t even make it to a vote in the House. This new policy is coming from the CFPB.
Also Biden did not pardon those 1500; he commuted them to time served.
Yeah the commuting is what was written up in in the Cares act in 2020.
The point of the first part was that he didn’t wait until 2024 to do it… he’s been trying to do it since 2021 and getting road blocked. Why it isn’t getting road blocked now? Well it might be to soon to see… but I suspect it’ll go through now
As someone who has been struggling lately, I could really use this… I have to dip just to make ends meet and it’s $30 for every transaction. I try to plan it so the one big bill takes the hit to minimize impact.
If you have the option, I’d recommend switching to a credit union.
My CU has a small line of credit set up for me that protects from overdraft fees if I make a mistake. Should I ever overdraft, it’ll deduct from that instead, and then I’m on the hook for mere pennies instead of dollars.
My bank actually offered me something similar. I didn’t take them up on it because I know it’s subjected to credit approval, and I am in absolutely no position to be approved anyway. Plus, this line is great for this, but it can also be used for other things, and I honestly don’t need the temptation to further my issues.
Watch it have some provision included that allows them to change how often they charge this fee or something.
thank god we won’t have to go through four more years of this!!! /s
Oh yeah Biden, way to show the repubes on your way out 😎
Edit: i knew this would get downvotes, idgaf though. I even voted for Harris. I’m tired of the Democrats just ceding ground to Republicans over everything and never once showing any fucking backbone
They began work on this in January 2024.
Small victories are better than no victories i guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It will get reverted but hey DNCs need a good deadline after being destroyed in the election
The amount of effort expended in this comment is apparent
