NPR.

I got my first debit card in the mid 2000s, right?

I always in college and I remember thinking this is pretty sweet, right?

I don't need to carry around cash and if I need a textbook, I can just swipe and you know,

if I want a burrito for lunch, swipe, swipe, right? Easy, peasy. Until I swiped one too many times,

overdrew my account and got hit with an overdraft fee.

Oh, the overdraft fee. And they're not nothing. I've been hit with them too. It's like, you know,

often like $30, $40. It's a lot. Yeah. And the thing that's always confused me is like, what

didn't they just stop the payment if I didn't have the money, right? Instead, they charge me money

for not having enough money. Still, you know, these fees, they're just something that you deal with

if you want to have a checking account, right? But that might be changing.

This is the indicator from Planet Money. I'm Stacey Manick Smith. And I'm Adrian Ma.

In recent days, companies like Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Capital One, they announced

they're scaling back or even eliminating overdraft fees. They are also among the many banks

that make a lot of money from overdrafts and similar fees. According to the Consumer Financial

Protection Bureau, these fees recently made banks about $15 billion in one year.

So why would banks ever back away from this? And why are they backing away now?

Today on the show, the evolution of overdraft fees. How they went from a perk for wealthy clients

to a penalty so despised, some banks are leaving hundreds of millions of dollars on the table.

Also, we should mention Capital One and Bank of America are NPR sponsors.

This message comes from NPR sponsor Fundrise, a platform that makes investing in high-end

real estate easy. You tell Fundrise your investing goals and Fundrise puts your money into

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