Bank of America to ‘test’ annual fee on 1% of credit customers

Bank of America (BOA) may have promised not to raise its interest rates before the implementation of the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure (CARD) Act next February, but apparently implementing new fees is still fair game.

On Tuesday, Bank of America announced that itwould be sending notices out to 1 percent of its credit card customers stating they would be charged a fee ranging from $29 to $99 in February as part of what spokesperson Betty Reiss called the testing of an annual fee that had not yet been implemented

"We’re testing this to see what the feedback is. In terms of any plans going forward, we haven’t made any decisions," Reiss said.

According to MyBankTracker, the bank also added that the fees were being considered as “response to market changes, new federal laws and regulations, and the increasing costs of providing unsecured credit."

The announcement of the new fee comes one week after Bank of America became one of the first to announce they would not be imposing any "misleading" increases to their card holders’ interest rates in the months before new regulations went into effect in February as part of the Credit CARD act.