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the estimates I’ve seen say it cost ~$100-$500 for a bank to administer a checking account annually.

Is that an average or an actual cost per account?

And what is the breakdown on that? What's actually costing the banks that much?

I don’t know the breakdown, but it’s: banking software, mailed account statements, debit cards, phone support centers, websites, bank branches, compliance, ATM networks, check processing etc.

Obviously some of these costs scale very cheaply, but there is quite a bit that goes into a modern bank account+ some customers are costlier than others (lost of call center calls/lost debit cards for example)

It was an average - but it was just for checking accounts

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