Cut the Fee, or Wait and See?
Consumer Checking Account Fairness Act
Addressing common customer complaints about banks, the CCAF Act would:
- Instruct the Federal Reserve to reduce hold times.
- Prevent banks from assessing overdraft fees for checks written against current (but not available) balances. To illustrate, if a check is deposited on Monday, the customer should be able to write a check against that amount on Tuesday, if not the same day, without incurring overdraft fees.
- Require that credits be posted before debits during end-of-day processing for personal or household checking accounts.
- Count Saturday as a business day in calculating the date of funds availability for a deposit, at institutions that also debit checking accounts on Saturday.
- Make funds available on the second day after deposit for a non-local check.
- Adjust the limit for additional hold times from $5,000 to $7,500.
- Make available the first $500 of deposits on any given business day.
- Prevent banks from imposing fees for "bounce protection" unless a customer affirmatively requests it.
- Require banks to clear state-issued checks at the ATM by the following business day.
- Establish a national "minimum basis" of consumer protection.
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