A bank of America overdraft fee is an item fee that is issued by a bank when the customer does not have enough money to complete a particular transaction. In the case of an overdraft fee, Bank of America would take charge of the transaction for the customer. This would make your account to have a negative balance.
There are some banking activities that might incur an overdraft from the bank of America. In the course of this article, we would, be looking at a practical guide on how to overdraft your bank of America account.
Some of the things that might cause your bank of America account to have a negative balance include (how to overdraft your bank of America accounts);
- Transactions or checks that the bank customer makes with their checking number
- Debit card transactions that are recurring
- ACH transactions
- Auto pay utility bills
- Credit card payments
- Automatic bill payments made with your bank of America account
- Online payments that take time to be processed
This is a list of typical transactions that can incur an overdraft in your bank of America account.
Now that we know how to overdraft your bank of America account let us look at how to protect it from an overdraft fee.
What is an overdraft protection transfer fee?
A bank of America customer can choose to opt for an overdraft protection fee. This is what allows customers with a negative balance to be able to withdraw from their accounts on checks, recurring debit card transactions, automatic bill payments or ATM withdrawals.
Instead of the normal $35 overdraft fee, Bank of America charges the customer a $12 overdraft protection fee if they choose the program. For a bank of America customer to enable overdraft protection, they would need to link a qualified account. This would enable the bank to transfer funds from one account to another should there be an overdraft.
Here are the three Bank of America qualified accounts that can be used to ensure an overdraft protection fee:
- Credit card
- Line of credit and
- Savings or secondary checking account
What special considerations does the bank of America take in regards to overdrafts?
It is important for the customer to know that there are limits to the number of overdraft fees that can be incurred in a single day. The number does not usually exceed four.
There are also account types that are not eligible for overdraft or NSF fees. Some of which include, the bank of America advantage safebalance and advantage savings accounts. With these aforementioned bank of America accounts, they are set to decline any kind of overdraft. If you possess this bank of America account types and what to make any transaction without sufficient funds, the transaction would be declined.
That is why it is better to opt for overdraft protection so that you would have peace of mind.
Before planning to opt for an overdraft protection service, it is important to know some things beforehand. First is that overdraft protection is not mandatory. Accounts that you use for an overdraft have more fees than those that don’t even if you have overdraft protection.
Another important point to take note of is that you can opt-in and out of overdraft protection at any time.