#Occupybanking?

Most of you by now have probably heard about the Occupy Wall Street movement (if not, here is a handy wiki article with a breakdown). What you may not have heard of is the much smaller, but somewhat more related movement called Bank Transfer Day. While this might not be completely related to my blogs topic, I believe that it is an interesting tale of the use of social media within a protest against the major banks.

The protest was started by Kristen Christian, who created a Facebook event for yesterday, November 5th, entitled "Bank Transfer Day" as a form of protest against higher bank fees. She urged people to transfer their funds from major banks to local credit unions, and by Friday afternoon more than 78,000 people had joined the cause on the groups Facebook page. The Occupy Wall Street movement has extended their support to Christian's cause, which has helped the rise of the movement.

In such a short time, they have been able to make a difference. According to this nytimes article, more than 650,000 new accounts have been created at credit unions since Bank of America announced their plan (which they have since dropped) for 5 dollar fees for using debit cards.

Major banks have a legitimate worry in terms of losing customers to small credit users. The Wall Street Journal reports that it costs major banks $350 to $450 to maintain an account, compared to just $175 to $250 for small credit unions. Thus, banks add extra charges to try and recoup their costs. While we may not see a major shift from big banks to credit unions, as banks offer a ton of services (like online banking) that many credit unions do not, it is interesting to see how much momentum the Bank Transfer Day picks up, and whether we will see reform in banking policy over the next few years.