Traditional Banks Choose to Charge Their Customers with a For-Profit Mindset
Bank fees whether hidden or right in front of your face are not cool, particularly when you don’t even know what they are for. Ultimately a bank’s prime objective is to maximize profits: They make money off you, not for you!
hi sees things differently — we seek to maxzimize member value, not profits. Our members will be able to buy, exchange, and transfer money in real-time, with no added fees. Compare that with legacy systems from the last century and huge staff and real estate obligations, traditional banks are always looking at ways to charge their customers — even for the smallest of issues.
How much? In 2020, Citigroup earned $11B USD in profits, while JP Morgan loaded up $29B USD!
How traditional banks mismanage your money with fees:
- Minimum account balance fees: Some banks require customers to keep a minimum balance every month. If the balance dips below this — the customer gets hit with a fee.
- Withdrawal and transfer fees: Many accounts allow customers only a certain number of transactions each month. More than that? The bank charges a service fee.
- ATM fees: If customers make excessive withdrawals from ATMs or if they use machines out of their bank’s network — load up the fees. There’s more — ATM operators themselves can add charges (with a small warning while you are in the middle of a withdrawal).
- Non-sufficient funds (NSF) fees: Don’t have enough money to cover the full amount of a transaction? Banks reverse it and hit you with an NSF charge.
- Overdraft fees: Like the NSF fee, whenever a customer’s account balance dips below zero, this incurs an overdraft fee. The bank may also charge interest on the average overdraft balance — adding more pain — even when you have additional funds in an account with them.
- Late payment fees: Miss the due date on your card bill? They smile and charge a fee.
If that’s not enough, banks and money transfer companies make significant profits on currency exchange (up to 8%) and wire transfers.
As you can see, there are a lot of ways that traditional banks make money out of their customers!
New member powered ecosystem
At hi we believe that global, open, instant, and low/no cost movement of money will create immense economic opportunity for all. Everyone has a right to access financial services and to control their money without excess charges, and financial services infrastructure should be designed and governed as a public good to help advance financial inclusion.
Our mission is to build the world’s first membership economy grounded in transparency and community. To do this, we are utilizing blockchain technology to build a range of services that are community powered.
We believe your banking relationship should benefit you, not your bank.