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Courtesy Pay
There are no additional costs associated with the overdraft protection service unless you use Courtesy Pay℠. Checks drawn up to your Courtesy Pay℠ limit will generally not be automatically returned unpaid, but will be considered for payment using your Courtesy Pay℠ limit. This can save you the high costs and embarrassment associated with returned check fees charged by merchants and retailers. For each overdraft we pay on your eligible checking account, we will charge the standard per item overdraft fee set forth in our Common Features Fee Schedule (currently $37.00). In addition, a Continuous OD (Overdraft) Fee of $35.00 will be imposed every five (5) business days until you bring your account positive. This fee is applied to your account when it has been overdrawn for five (5) or more consecutive business days. A maximum of five (5) charges or $175 will be charged for each time period your account remains in a negative status. Other fees can lead to a negative balance, which can lead to additional fees. This fee is in addition to Overdraft Item and NSF Return Item fees that may apply to your account for each overdraft or returned item. You can avoid this fee by promptly covering your overdraft – deposit or transfer enough available funds to cover your overdraft, plus any fees we assessed, within the first 5 consecutive business days that your account is overdrawn.
No. Courtesy Pay℠ is a discretionary service and may be applied to any qualifying checking account that meets the requirements for good standing.
Personal checking* $750
Business checking* $1,500
Not all checking accounts are eligible and some restrictions apply to eligible accounts. Courtesy Pay℠ is not available to account holders less than 18 years of age. Your Courtesy Pay℠ limit will include standard NSF/overdraft fees that are charged to your account. Please note that both per item and Continuous Overdraft Fees count toward your Courtesy Pay℠ limit. We may in our sole discretion limit the number of accounts eligible for Courtesy Pay℠ to one account per household or per taxpayer identification number. Some restrictions apply and you should read our Courtesy Pay℠ Disclosure for more information.
Overdrafts beyond your established Courtesy Pay℠ limit, or if you do not maintain your account in good standing as defined in our Courtesy Pay℠ Disclosure, may result in checks being returned to the payee. The fee for paying an item is the same as for returning one. A standard NSF/overdraft fee will be charged and assessed to your account for each item. We will continue to notify you electronically (if we receive your consent) or by mail of all paid and returned overdrafts, and of our fees for these overdrafts.
You need to bring your account balance positive promptly, or upon our demand. In addition, a Continuous OD (Overdraft) Fee of $35.00 will be imposed every five (5) business days until you bring your account positive. This fee is applied to your account when it has been overdrawn for five (5) or more consecutive business days. A maximum of five (5) charges or $175 will be charged for each time period your account remains in a negative status. Other fees can lead to a negative balance, which can lead to additional fees. If you are not able to repay as we require, you will receive a letter informing you of your options. If, after a period of time, your account has not been brought into a positive balance, we will have no option but to close your account and take steps to recover the funds.
The account types that are eligible for Courtesy Pay℠ Service are: Personal Checking, NOW Checking, and Business Checking.
If you feel this service is not for you, please let us know. We have other options that may help to cover inadvertent overdrafts, such as lines of credit and transfers between accounts. We would be happy to discuss these alternatives with you.
The convenience of Courtesy Pay℠ is available for checks and other transactions made using your checking account number, automatic bill payments, ATM transactions and everyday debit card transactions initiated for payment against your checking account (if opted in). Rather than automatically declining the transactions that qualify when there are insufficient funds in your account, we will consider payment of reasonable overdrafts.
The available balance is the amount of funds you can use for withdrawal from your account without causing an overdraft. The order in which you make withdrawals from your account may not be the same as the order in which those transactions are posted. For example, when you write a check to pay a merchant, the merchant may not present the check to us for payment until several days later. Sometimes funds in your account are not available to cover your checks and other items, and it may appear that you have enough funds in your account to cover a debit but still get an overdraft fee on the debit. This can occur when your account balance included funds that were not available at the time we processed the debit. Funds subject to a hold, dispute or legal process are not available funds.
When a transaction is “posted,” the dollar value of that transaction is added to or subtracted from the balance of your account. For example, POS (Point of Sale) debit card transactions reduce your available balance at the time you authorize your purchase. Overdraft fees (if applicable) are assessed on POS debit card transactions at the time a POS becomes final, which in some cases may take several days. If your account does not have a sufficient available balance, the posting order can impact the number of overdraft fees you incur. When we process multiple transactions in a single business day, we may post items in any order. We generally group transactions in categories by type of transaction and post in the order they are presented (time stamped). The following are the most common categories and types:
- Deposits that have become available to you post first
- We then may charge for any debt owed to us. In most cases, fees related to transactions would be assessed the day of the transaction and would be deducted from the available balance after the transaction is completed
- We pay Debit items in the following order:
- Wire transfers, ATM and POS debit card transactions, in-person withdrawals and checks cashed at a Berkshire Bank branch, internal transfers to other Berkshire Bank accounts, payments and transfers initiated via Online Banking, and returned deposited items
- ACH debits that you have preauthorized then post lowest to highest dollar amount
- Checks not presented in-person at a Berkshire Bank branch post lowest to highest dollar amount
- We then typically assess any Overdraft Fee, NSF Return Item Fee (Insufficient Funds), UAF Overdraft Fee (Uncollected/Unavailable Funds Fee) on the day the debit caused the overdraft or returned item. More than one overdraft fee may be charged against the account per day, not to exceed 5 per day. Continuous OD (overdraft) fees are assessed on the fifth business day that the balance has been overdrawn. The fee would be deducted from the available balance at that time
- Service Charges that will be assessed at the end of your statement cycle may include a Monthly Maintenance Service Charge, Below Minimum Balance Maintenance Fee, or Returned Mail Fee (If applicable)
We may give preference to any fees, charges, checks, debits or other items payable to us. However, if for some reason we must manually post your payments, items presented for payment may be paid in an order we select. If you are expecting a credit to your account by ACH, you should not schedule a debit to occur on the same day as your ACH credit may not be received until after your debit, resulting in an overdraft. For example, an ACH withdrawal transaction may be held for up to two business days before it posts to your account. We may change our posting order at any time, but we will notify you if such a change may affect you adversely. On your account statement we do not necessarily report debits and credits in the order that we posted them to your account. If an item is presented without sufficient available funds in your account to pay it, we may, at our discretion, pay the item (creating an overdraft) or return the item (NSF). The amounts of the overdraft and NSF fees are disclosed elsewhere. We encourage you to make careful records and practice good account management. This will help you to avoid writing checks or drafts without sufficient available funds and incurring the resulting fees.
For more information, call 833.BERKBNK, or stop into any Berkshire Bank office.
Important:
To avoid an overdraft, you can stop any ATM/debit card transaction by pressing “cancel” at any time prior to completing a withdrawal, transfer or purchase. We are not promising to always pay your overdrafts with this discretionary service, not all accounts are eligible, and some restrictions do apply.
Disclosures:
† Berkshire One Checking: The minimum balance to open a Berkshire One Checking Account is $10. Minimum balance to earn variable interest rate and Annual Percentage Yield (APY) is $0.01. In order to receive the stated variable 0.10% Annual Percentage Yield (APY), this account must be enrolled in Paperless Statements and Notices. This is a variable rate account, and the interest rate and APY are subject to change without notice. Product not available for business accounts. Courtesy Pay℠, our discretionary service, is not available for this account. Generally, we will not authorize or pay transactions when you do not have enough money in your account. Fees may be charged by the merchant if your transactions are returned unpaid. For transactions that are pre-authorized by us, we must pay those transactions when they are presented for payment even if your account balance at the time of settlement is not sufficient to cover them. When this happens, you are not charged overdraft fees or continuous overdraft fees. Identity theft protection services are available for this account. Information about Identity Theft services will be sent in a separate email. Fees may reduce earnings on the account.
1 The Stream On credit is not valid for Berkshire Bank clients with an existing Berkshire Bank checking account and is limited to new Berkshire One checking account clients only. The following additional terms apply to this account: If you qualify each calendar month, for the 24 months following account opening, we will credit up to $15 per month into your Berkshire One Checking account. Monthly credits will cease the 25th calendar month after account opening. Berkshire Bank will provide a credit in the amount of the highest streaming service paid up to $15. For example: If you pay $6.99 a month for Netflix and $7.99 a month for Disney+, you will receive a streaming service credit of $7.99 the following calendar month. If you pay over $15 a month for one of the above streaming services, you will receive a credit of $15 the following calendar month. This credit will show on your statement with the description “Credit for streaming service”. Stream On credits are capped at 24 per tax reported owner. When the Stream On qualifications are met, the credit will be posted to your account within the following calendar month. If you do not qualify at any point during the 24 calendar months following account opening, you will NOT receive the streaming service credit for that calendar month. Stream On credit Scenarios: 1. You open your Berkshire One Checking account August 1, 2024, and qualify for the Stream On credits consistently for 24 months. At the end of the promotional period, July 31, 2026, you will have received 24 Stream On credits. 2. You open your Berkshire One Checking account August 1, 2024, but do not qualify for the Stream On credits until September 1, 2024. At the end of the promotional period, July 31, 2026, you will have received 23 Stream On credits. 3. You open your Berkshire One Checking account August 1, 2024, and qualify for the Stream On credit for the remainder of 2024. In January 2025, your monthly combined direct deposit falls short of the $2,000 requirement, you will not receive the credit in February. If you then subsequently qualify in February and continue to qualify each calendar month, you will receive the Stream On credit until July 31, 2026. At the end of the promotional period, you will have received 23 Stream On credits. If the account is closed before any credits are posted to your account, the credits will be forfeited. Your credits may be reportable to the IRS on Form 1099-MISC.
To qualify for the Stream On credit, each Calendar Month you must:
Have a combined Direct Deposit total of $2,000 or more each month into your Berkshire One Checking account AND Set up a monthly subscription with one of the following five streaming services to be debited out of your Berkshire One Checking account: Disney+, Netflix, Hulu, YouTube Premium or Paramount+. Annual subscriptions do not qualify. Both required transactions must post and settle to the account during the Calendar Month. Your monthly streaming service debit must post and settle to your account by the end of business (5 PM EST) on the last business day of a Calendar Month to be counted. Transactions may take one or more business days to post and settle to an account after the date a transaction is made. “Calendar Month” begins on the first of the month and ends the last day of the monthly period.
3 Cell phone insurance is offered through Mastercard. Berkshire Bank has a relationship with Mastercard to offer services to its customers. The maximum liability is $800 per claim, and $1,000 per covered card per 12 month period. Each claim is subject to a $50 deductible. Coverage is limited to two (2) claims per covered card per 12 month period. To learn more about how you qualify for this cell phone insurance, Click here.
4 All non-Berkshire Bank ATM Inquiry fees waived. We will reimburse all non-Berkshire Bank ATM Withdrawal and Surcharge fees incurred nationwide per statement cycle. Your surcharge (non-Berkshire Bank ATM fee) credits may be reportable to the IRS on Form 1099-MISC. "Statement Cycle” begins the calendar day after the previous Statement Cycle ends and runs through the last business day of the statement period. Berkshire Bank’s ATM policies are subject to change at our discretion at any time.
5 Identity theft protection services are available for the Berkshire One Checking account. Information about Identity Theft services will be sent in a separate email Eligible customers for Identity Theft services would include the Consumer, his/her spouse or domestic partner, dependents in the household up to age 25, other IRS-qualified dependents in the household, and parents living at the same address as the consumer, or living in hospice, assisted living, or nursing home.
7 Consult your mobile carrier for any fees they may charge for Internet usage or receiving texts.