Bank of America will stop offering an unusual service for savings account holders
Bank of America customers will no longer be able to write checks on their savings accounts soon, the bank confirmed this week.
Customers can no longer order checks for their savings account, according to a notice the bank sent to customers. Checks presented on or after Aug. 20 will be returned unpaid, and payments processed as a check using a savings account may be rejected.
Bank of America first notified customers of the change in June. The change will encourage customers to use their savings account as a place to save, and help them avoid transaction limits, the bank said in a statement.
Customers can still make electronic payments using bill pay, transfers or Zelle.
It’s unusual for banks to allow customers to write checks on their savings accounts, because checking accounts are designed for that explicit purpose, said Ken Tumin, founder and editor of DepositAccounts.com, a bank account comparison website owned by LendingTree.
“It’s extremely rare to have that kind of check writing capability,” he said. The only cases where limited check writing is sometimes allowed, he said, is with a money market account.
The feature was little-used by customers, Bank of America said.
Just 1% of savings account holders were writing checks from their savings accounts, and those customers were writing an average of just four checks a year.
