Single mother Rebecca Wood, 45, was already dealing with high medical bills in 2020 when she noticed she was being charged a $2.49 “program fee” each time she loaded money onto her daughter’s school lunch account.
As more schools turn to cashless payment systems, more districts have contracted with processing companies that charge as much as $3.25 or 4% to 5% per transaction, according to a new report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The report found that though legally schools must offer a fee-free option to pay by cash or check, there’s rarely transparency around it.
“It wouldn’t have been a big deal if I had hundreds of dollars to dump into her account at the beginning of the year,” Wood said. “I didn’t. I was paying as I went, which meant I was paying a fee every time. The $2.50 transaction fee was the price of a lunch. So I’d pay for six lunches, but only get five.”
I didn’t have the option to have my bank send it in, but I printed a check for each kid each month to cover school lunch costs. I don’t know what it cost them to process the checks, but it wasn’t all that inconvenient for me to do. If there had been a no-cost way to load funds online I would have done it, but it wouldn’t have been much more convenient for me. I’m not going to pay extra to make it easier for them.
America is so f’ed up. I can, for free, send as many e-transfers as I want. It makes paying rent, phone bill, etc soooo much easier.