Arvest Ups Online Banking

It’s been a little more than a year since Arvest Bank quit charging its customers for its online bill pay service (what used to be a $5.95 per month fee). We wondered if the bank had generated any extra traffic with the complimentary service.
An insider said “yes,” that the number of active online bill payers went from about 11,000 customers at the end of 2005 to nearly 38,000 at the end of 2006. A 245 percent increase in a segment that is driving people to electronic transactions is good in anybody’s book, though we figure it came at a loss of between $65,000 and $2.2 million in fees.
Too, we understand that December was a big month for Arvest’s online bill pay service. Our insider said customers made 146,000 payments worth a total of $37.5 million through the bank’s Web site, or about $257 per transaction.