If there's one thing that U.S. firms love to market, it's free stuff. Free checking. Free overdraft protection. Free toasters. So customers have been conditioned on this, which is really a problem. It makes them absolutely livid when they start seeing "hidden" fees. Who can blame them. This brings us to mobile banking. The industry already has essentially promised--that's how the public will see it--a free service. So there will be some real anger if fees start cropping up on statements. In the U.K. and New Zealand, some experimentation with per-message and other charges is occurring. Some banks, like HSBC and Lloyd's, charge for text alerts. This makes a lot of sense. U.S. banks will closely watch for backlash, and may have no choice at some point but to start recouping the costs of their investments. It will be tricky, but then again, a lot of ATM services used to be free.

For more:
- here's a Finance Tech article [1] on U.K. banks
- here's a Bank Technology News article [2] on New Zealand banks

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