Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/top-banks-rethink-policies-on-overdraft-fees Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript Leading banks move to change overdraft fees deemed harmful to consumers. Jeffrey Brown speaks with a banking expert about the overhaul. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. JIM LEHRER: Now, Jeffrey Brown has the latest on changes ahead for debit cards and the companies that issue them. JEFFREY BROWN: When you use that debit card in your wallet — and more of us are doing that — what are you agreeing to? What happens, for example, if you use it to spend more than you realize you have in your checking account?Consumer groups and now some legislators have been up in arms about banks charging so-called overdraft fees that can amount to far more than the overdraft itself and can be assessed numerous times.Today, two of the nation's biggest banks, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, announced they would revise their policies on these fees. Here to tell us more is Ron Lieber. He's the personal finance reporter for the New York Times and writes the paper's "Your Money" column.Ron, let's start with the problem. Explain how the overdraft fees work. RON LIEBER: Well, the way the banks refer to this as overdraft protection and it happens automatically in many cases and consumers often don't realize that they have it. It may have been part of the fine print when they signed up for their accounts.But the way that it works is if, if you spend more than you have in your bank account, the bank may automatically cover you and allow the transaction to go through, whether it's a debit card transaction you make at a store or an ATM transaction you make at the ATM machine, a withdrawal, or even with a bounced check.And so what will happen then is that the purchase will, in fact, go through, the transaction will go through, but then you'll get charged a fee, say, $30 or $35. And for as long as you are overdrawn, as long as you're spending below zero, you'll get hit with a fee every single time you make a transaction until you make a deposit of some sort and your account is above zero again. JEFFREY BROWN: All right, so that clearly raised a lot of hackles from consumers and some in Congress. What have the banks agreed to do?