[LINK] Banks charging for internet banking

[Chirgwin, Richard]

Chirgwin, Richard wrote:
>> Not according to the NAB Website which tells us that Internet
>transaction
>> history, funds transfer, multiple funds transfer and BPay on personal
>> accounts are all subject to 20c per transaction fee.

Danny:
>I can live with actual transactions being charged, but how can they
>justifiy charging for simple viewing of transaction histories?

Well, yes and no. Banks "behaviour-engineered" the customers towards the
Internet on the basis of "counter expensive, Internet free". So there is, or
was, an element of false advertising in the marketing ploys of a couple of
years ago. The rationale then was that "transactions on the Internet only
cost a couple of cents per", which was deliberately misleading.

But as to "viewing transaction histories"; there's probably no economic
difference between any transaction type on Internet banking. The fee is
either "(total cost of infrastructure / total number of transactions) +
margin", or it's "how much will these suckers put up with?" 

In the first case, transactions are all equal so they're charged equally. In
the second, there's no point in working out a supply-side differential,
because it's another exercise in behaviour engineering: find the point at
which customers are irritated enough to change their behaviour, and back off
a little.

Richard Chirgwin