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SAN FRANCISCO - A national consumer group is weighing on California state officials to negotiate more "user-friendly" terms in a pending electronic benefit transfer contract with Citigroup Inc., which has been sharply criticized in the past for its EBT services in other states.
August 30 -
College students risk paying hundreds of dollars in fees each year if they overuse campus banking products, according to Consumer Reports.
August 28 -
Upstate New York banker John Buhrmaster will spend the much of the next year fighting for community banks as they struggle to keep pace with mounting regulations. But he also intends to remind his counterparts that it's crucial for them to find new income streams.
February 28 -
RBS Citizens Financial Group announced Tuesday three major tech upgrades for customers of Citizens Bank and Charter One (a division of RBS Citizens that operates in Illinois, Michigan and Ohio): it replaced its fleet of 1,600 ATMs, implemented a new digital teller system and enhanced its mobile apps.
March 11
A new California law is reducing the amount of ATM fees certain borrowers have to pay.
Gov. Jerry Brown signed the Electronic Benefits Transfer Protection and Empowerment Act, AB 1614, on Sunday. The law includes a requirement that recipients of the California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids welfare program must receive information that helps prevent ATM fees being charged against them when accessing their benefits.
A California Reinvestment Coalition report released in March revealed that individuals paid $19.4 million in ATM fees in 2012 to withdraw their CalWORKs and other public assistance benefits. Bank of America earned $3.6 million from such fees. JPMorgan Chase received $2.8 million, while Wells Fargo obtained $2.3 million, the report found.
"This measure will help parents better provide basic necessities for their kids instead of using part of their needed benefits to pay for bank and ATM fees," Assemblyman Mark Stone, D-Monterey Bay and the law's sponsor, said in a press release Monday. "I'm pleased the governor has taken this step to fight multigenerational poverty."
The law directs county CalWORKS administrators to inform recipients about less-expensive alternatives, like direct deposit. The law requires all future EBT vendors who administer this system to provide a toll-free number and online dashboard for consumers to track their card use to report any potential theft.
The law also requires all EBT vendors to alert recipients and retailers if an outage is expected to last for more than an hour.
"California has one of the best systems for delivering benefits to grant recipients," Jessica Bartholow, a legislative advocate for the Western Center on Law and Poverty, said in the release. "Improvements made by AB 1614 will simply increase the ability of our state's poorest consumers to make choices and prioritize their resources for their basic needs."
