--- title: The Biggest Bank Yet Just Announced It's Ending Overdraft Fees description: Citigroup, the owner of Citibank (Citi), joins Capital One and other banks by eliminating overdraft fees and NSF fees in the summer of 2022. authors: - name: Adam Hardy role: Lead Data Reporter url: https://money.com/author/adam-hardy/ bio: Adam Hardy is a lead data journalist at Money, where he frequently reports on financial barriers that affect low-income Americans. Adam’s work has also appeared in Business Insider, Forbes, Nasdaq, The Penny Hoarder, Yahoo! Finance and more than a dozen local and regional newspapers. education: University of South Florida, BA, Magazine Journalism at_money_since: 2021 articles: 497 covers: - Banking - Business - Career Advice - Credit - Credit Cards - Debt - Economy and Politics - Education - Health and Wellness - Housing - Identity Theft - Insurance - Investing - Lifestyle - Loans - Mortgages - Personal Finance - Pets - Professional Services - Retirement - Shopping - Taxes - Technology also_seen_in: - The Penny Hoarder - Forbes Advisor - Creative Loafing - The New York Times - The Washington Post - Bloomberg - Harvard Law School - The Federal Register - National Consumer Law Center - CBS News - Becker's Hospital Review - Business Insider - Mother Jones - The Week - Fortune - The Philadelphia Inquirer - National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NAFSAA) - Education Advisory Board (EAB) - The Institute for College Access & Success (TICAS) - This Morning with Gordon Deal - Empower - Reddit social: - https://www.x.com/hardyjournalism - https://www.linkedin.com/in/hardyjournalism/ published: '2022-02-25T21:07:26.000Z' modified: '2024-01-10T13:37:02.000Z' section: Banking tags: - bank fees - Banks - News - overdrafts word_count: 779 canonical: https://money.com/citi-eliminating-overdraft-fees/ type: NewsArticle source: structured-blocks --- > **Disclosure:** We research all brands listed and may earn a fee from our partners. Research and financial considerations may influence how brands are displayed. Not all brands are included. [Learn more](https://money.com/page/disclaimer/). ![Line of people ready to use the ATM at Citibank](https://img.money.com/2022/02/News-Citi-biggest-bank-eliminates-overdraft-fees.jpg) Another bank is eliminating overdraft fees — and this time, it's one of the biggest banks in the U.S. By summertime, Citigroup, the owner of Citibank aka Citi, will follow the moves of [other banks](https://money.com/capital-one-drops-overdraft-fees/) by completely getting rid of overdraft fees, as well as overdraft-protection and non-sufficient funds (NSF) fees. The new policy would make Citi the largest U.S. bank thus far to nix such fees, which are charged when a customer doesn't have an account balance high enough to cover a transaction. Citi’s decision comes amid pressure from [competing banks](https://money.com/bank-of-america-overdraft-fees-change/) and from a federal watchdog agency. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) recently announced that it's cracking down on banks that are "heavily dependent" on such fees. The agency launched an initiative last month that encourages consumers to [lodge complaints about the worst “junk fees”](https://money.com/mortgage-bank-fees-complaints-cfpb/) they’ve encouraged at financial institutions, including banks, credit unions and credit card companies. "Junk fee" is a broad term that includes charges that were excessive, unexpected or confusing. NSF and overdraft fees certainly fit the bill. A recent [CFPB report](https://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/documents/cfpb_overdraft-chart_2022-02.pdf) shows that banks rake in billions of dollars from these kinds of fees. In the first nine months of 2021 alone, Wells Fargo made $1 billion, JP Morgan Chase made $924 million, and Bank of America made $823 million in revenue from NSF and/or overdraft fees. Several other large banks made hundreds of millions off the fees as well. During that same period of time, Citi made $70 million. ## Bank fees: Overdrafts, NSF fees, overdraft protection Recently, several other major banks have announced changes to their NSF and overdraft-related fees. But not all of them are eliminating the fees entirely, and distinguishing what fees remain and when they are charged can be confusing. For example, this month Bank of America is beginning to [reduce some of its NSF and overdraft fees](https://money.com/bank-of-america-overdraft-fees-change/). The bank said it will first eliminate its NSF fees in February and its overdraft-protection fees in May. That same month, the bank will also reduce its overdraft fees from $35 to $10. Each fee is slightly different: - **An NSF fee** is basically a bounced-check fee. It is charged when you overdraw your checking account, your bank does not honor the transaction *and* you incur a fee for not having enough in your account. - **An overdraft fee** is one in which you overdraw your account and your bank allows the transaction to go through anyway — charging you a fee for the service in the process. Both NSF and overdraft fees are typically around $30 to $35. - **An overdraft-protection fee** is essentially a money transfer fee that costs less than a typical NSF or overdraft fee. In this case, you overdraw one of your bank accounts, but you have an overdraft-protection service that automatically transfers funds from a separate account. The fee covers the transfer of funds. Citi says it is eliminating all three of these fees by this summer. Likewise, [Capital One is getting rid of all three fees](https://money.com/capital-one-drops-overdraft-fees/) for consumer banking customers "in early 2022." Figuring out exactly how these new policies will play out in real life is often not simple. For Capital One's program, customers will have the option to enroll in a no-fee overdraft account if they aren't already. Customers who don't take action will simply have a transaction declined if it exceeds their available balance, and no NSF fees will apply. As for Citi, spokesperson Karen Kearns confirmed to Money that once the new overdraft polices are in place, ATM withdraws and debit transactions that would bring the account balance below zero won't be authorized by default, thus avoiding the overdraft altogether. When it comes to other money transfers or checks that would overdraw the account, things get more complicated. Citi says that it may or may not allow the account to be overdrawn, depending on the circumstances. Back in June 2021, Ally was among the largest trendsetters, announcing it would remove overdraft fees for all accounts, effective immediately. Some institutions, such as Axos Bank, Discover and Betterment, partially ended overdraft fees, but only for certain types of [checking accounts](https://money.com/best-checking-accounts/). Synovus, PNC and Citizens have all recently reduced, but not removed, overdraft fees. The National Consumer Law Center, the Center for Responsible Lending and other consumer groups have long railed against overdraft fees, saying the fees cause families “severe financial distress in the best of times,” and that the pandemic has only pronounced that effect. Now with one of the largest banks in the U.S. on board with the trend, overdraft fees might soon become a thing of the past. ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "@id": "https://money.com/citi-eliminating-overdraft-fees/#breadcrumb", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://money.com" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Banking", "item": "https://money.com/banking/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Banks", "item": "https://money.com/banks/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "name": "The Biggest Bank Yet Just Announced It's Ending Overdraft Fees" } ] }, { "@type": "WebSite", "@id": "https://money.com/#website", "url": "https://money.com", "name": "Money", "publisher": { "@id": "https://money.com/#organization" } }, { "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "https://money.com/citi-eliminating-overdraft-fees/#webpage", "url": "https://money.com/citi-eliminating-overdraft-fees/", "name": "The Biggest Bank Yet Just Announced It's Ending Overdraft Fees", "isPartOf": { "@id": "https://money.com/#website" }, "datePublished": "2022-02-25T21:07:26.000Z", "mainEntity": { "@id": "https://money.com/citi-eliminating-overdraft-fees/" }, "inLanguage": "en-US", "breadcrumb": { "@id": "https://money.com/citi-eliminating-overdraft-fees/#breadcrumb" }, "dateModified": "2024-01-10T13:37:02.000Z" }, { "@type": "NewsArticle", "headline": "The Biggest Bank Yet Just Announced It's Ending Overdraft Fees", "articleSection": "Banking", "image": [ { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://img.money.com/2022/02/News-Citi-biggest-bank-eliminates-overdraft-fees.jpg", "width": 2880, "height": 1920, "caption": "News-Citi-biggest-bank-eliminates-overdraft-fees" } ], "author": [ { "@type": "Person", "name": "Adam Hardy", "url": "https://money.com/author/adam-hardy/", "@id": "https://money.com/author/adam-hardy/#author", "description": "Adam Hardy is a lead data journalist at Money, where he frequently reports on financial barriers that affect low-income Americans. 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