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Back in February, the $760 million-asset bank mailed customers its first notice, discussing how they would have to opt in to continue receiving overdraft coverage on debit-card and ATM transactions, a service for which it charges $26.25.
Several weeks later, employees started chatting with everyone who walked in about the upcoming change. “That is the key to the whole thing-the teller staff,” says Ross Little Jr., the chief retail officer.
The result of Teche‘s diligence: Of its 30,000 customers with debit cards, 86 percent have responded to the overdraft offer. And of those who responded, nearly all—96 percent—have opted in.
Moebs Services, a consulting firm that tracks industry statistics, says debit card and ATM overdrafts accounted for $19.4 billion of the $37.1 billion in total insufficient funds and overdraft fee income in 2009. Michael Moebs, the firm’s CEO, expects a relatively small drop in total overdraft fee income for 2010—he projects it at $35 billion—and sees it rebounding to $40 billion in 2011.
Wired ran a great story a few months back tracing the evolution of PayPal and other forms of payment services into what they dubbed “
, has announced that they have received a strategic investment from VC firm Andreessen Horowitz