| Following a huge protest across the country, the Bank of America, now the second largest bank in the US, has called off its plan to charge customers $5 a month for using its debit cards to make purchases.
Financial experts had expected most banks would follow suit in charging the $5 fee, after new rules restricted the fees banks charge merchants for accepting debit cards.
The bank announced the dropping of the fee in a two-paragraph statement citing "customer concerns and the changing competitive marketplace."
The Bank of America had earlier been challenged, in addition to many other banks, in deliberately designing billing systems to periodically generate payment due dates that are 5 to 6 days earlier than normal in an effort to catch automatic bill payers in a missed due date scam.
As soon as the earlier-than-normal bill pay date was missed, credit card interest rates zoomed up permanently with a whopping late fee.
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