[scintill76]

I'm not really in the know, but I'd guess "back in the day" it legitimately cost somebody something to deal with a cheque with a value greater than the balance of the account. Nowadays, it should be the same $0.0001 worth of computing/networking power which is already spent if it's a good cheque. I'd welcome corrections from someone who knows more, but I figure modern fees are just a way for the bank to extract money from people too harried to fight back. Perhaps some of it is legitimately used to subsidize general account maintenance, and maybe the banks are passing on a real cost specifically charged by a clearinghouse for bad debits -- but somewhere down the line, the bulk of it has to be lining someone's pocket.

If someone were attempting thousands of bad charges in a month, maybe they "deserve punishment" for abusing the system. What the fees do now is just taking money from people who already have little, and/or just lost track of their balance and made a small mistake that would have no bearing on anyone else if the bank didn't fine for it.