[Glyptodon]

I think there are kind of three tiers of financial services:

1. Payday loan tier. It's very extractive and uses lots of fees and interest because getting a cut of whatever money is there now is all that matters.

2. "Normal" tier. There basically aren't fees for typical services, everything is paid for indirectly via interest rates and card fees or marketing other services. The banks I've used since the 2000s have all been like this.

3. "Premium" tier. At this level there's usually a fee to keep out the "riffraff," like with most AmEx.

Do some normal tier providers have fees? I've seen credit unions where there are fees if you don't meet some threshold of services or usage. Or with some non CU accounts where there's a fee if balances don't stay above a certain level. But that's about it. I've also seen I think once or twice set ups where you had to opt in to things like free overdraft protection, but could get charged for it if you don't. But that seem like the fringes, not the norm.

[troupe]

When it comes to banks, there is also a tier where fees are waived for high value customers. For example, checking, atm, wires, are free if you have $50k or more in your checking account.

[Lopsii]

this is true. makes you question why they do it for them and not for everybody

[troupe]

There is a certain amount of overhead in servicing an account whether it has $5 in it or $500,000 in it. A $5 account doesn't give the bank much to loan while a $500,000 gives the bank lots of money to loan out. So the bank would rather have 100 $500k accounts than 100 $5 accounts. The fees help make the bank willing to maintain the $5 accounts.

[seanmcdirmid]

They want high tier customers and they don’t profit on low tier customers? Your bank can sell a lot of services to someone who has money to spare.

[tstrimple]

You cannot collect literally billions of dollars in overdraft fees a year if you let everyone do it.