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Comment by Retric | Hacker News Reader

I think part of the problem is banks don't make much money from the average account outside of fees. I would rather banks just charged say 20$ a month and had actual customer service instead of the mess big banks evolve into.

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Banks already do that for business accounts. Actually depending on the type of account it could be much, much more than that.

For reference I used to pay close to $10 / 30 days to have a business account open in Australia. Note that I said every 30 days, not every calendar month. This makes it slightly more expensive than you think.

>This makes it slightly more expensive than you think.

365.25 / 30 * $10 == $121.75

vs. $120.00 if it was per month. Slightly indeed.

It ends up as an extra payment every 5 years or so.

Given that most paid services are invoiced by calendar month, this is somewhat unusual.

> I think part of the problem is banks don't make much money from the average account outside of fees

Umm.. how about 'using your money to fund interest earning loans'?

And then fund more loans on those loans. Like fractional reserve banking.

Then package them up and sell them as a triple-A bond. Hey we are getting somewhere now.

What could possibly go wrong ^_^

A large number of accounts go close to zero every month limiting banks ability to use them for loans.

Loaning out money at 1-2% isn't great either, once you've accounted for administration and defaults.

The mess the banks are in has very little to do with current accounts being a loss leader.

Retail customers are the cheapest source of capital for BB. I remember directors would laugh about it when it was brought up. Banks are not doing retail (any) customers any favors.

They've got the money in the account. They can do whatever they want with it, included lending it many times. They don't need fees.

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