OMAHA — Tri-County Fidelity & Trust announced Monday a new $4 “Frequent Reassurance Fee,” charged each time a customer checks an account balance more than three times in a single day, a move the bank described as “the natural next step in meeting people where they are, which is panicking.”

The fee is part of the bank’s new Premium Anxiety Tier, an optional-in-the-sense-that-it-happens-automatically program that bills customers for the emotional experience of wondering whether they can afford things. Members of the tier receive a complimentary push notification reading “Still there!” after each charge.

“Our data showed that customers were already refreshing their balances at 2 a.m., in grocery lines, and during their own weddings,” said Dr. Marguerite Vanterpool-Oyelaran, Tri-County’s Senior Vice President of Monetized Dread and Retail Fretting. “We were providing that number free of charge. Frankly, it was irresponsible of us.”

According to the bank’s fee schedule, a customer’s fourth check of the day costs $4, the fifth costs $6, and every check after that is billed at a rate the schedule describes only as “a lot, honestly.” Customers who check their balance specifically to see whether a previous fee has posted are charged a separate $3 “Meta-Concern Surcharge.”

The bank said it has also introduced a Gold Anxiety Tier for customers who check their balance and then check it again immediately because the first number “didn’t look right.” Gold members receive a dedicated relationship manager who will say “I understand” in a calm voice for up to ninety seconds.

“The balance is the same number it was four minutes ago. We’re just not going to let that stop you from looking.”

That was the assessment of Hollis Prendergast-Abel, a behavioral economist at the Institute for Applied Dread at a university the bank declined to name. Prendergast-Abel called the fee “a brave, elegant invention,” noting that it is the first financial product to profit from a customer’s inability to trust arithmetic.

Customer reaction has been mixed. Dale Kowalczewski, a Tri-County account holder, said he was charged $14 on the first day of the program after checking his balance to see whether he had been charged. “I looked to make sure I hadn’t been billed for looking,” he said. “Then I looked again to see if the first look cost anything. I now owe the bank for my own suspicion.”

Tri-County insists the program is transparent. Fee disclosures are available in the mobile app, though the bank acknowledged that opening the disclosures counts as a balance check if the customer is “visibly worried while reading them.”

Asked whether the fee might discourage customers from monitoring their finances responsibly, Vanterpool-Oyelaran said the bank had considered this and built in a safeguard. “If a customer stops checking entirely, we charge a $9 Complacency Fee,” she said. “We want everyone to feel exactly the right amount of concern, and we have a price for that.”

The bank said it expects the new tier to generate $31 million annually, assuming customers continue to be alive and uncertain. A spokesperson confirmed that the projections were made by checking the figure several times.