Where I live (Canada), transactions are usually "free" up to a certain amount per month, but they often hit you with monthly fees. That is unless you can maintain a minimum balance in your bank account, in which case the fees become the interest they earn off that chunk of cash, I suppose.
I'm in Canada too and a couple years ago my regular bank sent me a notice saying they needed to increase my fees on my account plan by $1 making it a total of $16 per month IIRC. I already thought $15 was a total ripoff and trying to squeeze the extra $1 a month out of me got me annoyed enough to go looking for alternatives.
I got a free Tangerine account for free unlimited debit transactions. As a bonus I can withdraw cash with no fees at Scotiabank ATMs in addition to my normal bank. They also give you a VISA debit card that can be useful as a backup card for important online services (as long as you keep some money in it).
I also got a free (prepaid) Stack Mastercard. They give you a virtual credit card number you can use online plus a physical card. The main benefit though is 0% (or near 0%) foreign exchange fees. Most online services bill in USD and my normal bank charges around 2% extra in fees for the foreign currency conversion.
Then I reduced my normal bank account to the bare minimum $4 per month plan. So instead of squeezing an extra $12 per year from me, my bank gets $132 less per year now. However, that shows you why it works. Even if 9% of their customers do what I did they still make more money and I'd bet a ton that barely anyone reevaluates their banking because of a $1 per month increase in prices.
Canadian banks have a cosy non compete arrangement, and they are allowed to charge enormous Interac and CC transaction fees. Tangerine (Scotiabank's online only brand) and Simplii (CIBC) offer no fee accounts and unlimited free Interac. Canadians are very traditional and change resistant too, they like to go into the physical bank.
I think cheques still exist because there is no system in Interac for associating a destination account reference with an Interac transfer. In Australia cheques have been replaced by BPay (owned by the banks) and PostBillPay (owned by the Post Office) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BPAY. In fact, I've never had to use a cheque as an adult except for e.g. buying a car/house. Interbank transfers and instant payments (Osko) have been free for ages, at least 20 years. https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/bulletin/2020/mar/two-ye...
It shows how arthritic banking is in the West that payment systems like AliPay haven't been allowed.
