Banks Slowly Offer Alternatives to Overdraft Fees, a Bane of Struggling Spenders

Aggressive overdraft fees are worth tens of billions of dollars a year to the banking industry. Account holders are finally getting some better options.

In less than a week, Keri Fitzpatrick, a self-described lunch lady, was dinged for $175 she definitely didn’t have. A succession of automated payments over two days — for her phone, two credit cards and car insurance — pushed her TD Bank account into the red, socking her with $140 in overdraft fees. Then another unexplained fee surfaced on Friday, even though her paycheck had landed and she couldn’t find any other pending charges. Ms. Fitzpatrick, 29, said she should’ve been paying closer attention — she assumed she had more money in her account. But she still couldn’t believe how quickly the charges piled up.