À la carte financial services

Introducing A La Carte Checking
Excerpt:

Sharon Manning didn't like paying her bank each month for services she rarely used. So when a nearby lender offered to sell her only what she wanted, the 54-year-old Texas Realtor jumped at the chance.

With Frost Bank, a San Antonio-based unit of Cullen/Frost Bankers Inc., Ms. Manning has an account that carries a $5 monthly fee for basic checking that includes online and phone banking, account-balance email alerts and overdraft protection. She can get bells and whistles such as mobile bill-payment for an added $2 monthly.

Welcome to a la carte checking, a kinder and gentler way for banks to charge for basic services. By adopting the approach, Frost and another large lender, Union Bank out of San Francisco, are hoping to steer clear of the industry's fee-levying pitfalls, such as some rivals' abortive attempts to charge for debit-card use. "It's a better PR situation," said Alex Matjanec, a co-founder of MyBankTracker.com, a website that provides information about banks. "Banks aren't forcing people to pay these fees; consumers are 'opting in.'"

Comment: My Mom banks at Frost and testifies to their customer service. I have some shares of CFR in my IRA. I think that Frost is the largest Texas based bank. It is the 44th largest bank in the country.

I love the picture of Frost Texas in the above image.

À la carte services make sense to me.