Banks' Reward Checking Costs: Interest Vs ATM Fee Refunds

This Kasasa blog post mentioned a couple of interesting stats about Kasasa accounts. These are essentially high-yield reward checking accounts, but they also include checking accounts that have rewards other than high rates such as Amazon and iTunes refunds. According to the post, Kasasa accounts over the last 3 years have paid out $60 million in rewards and $5 million in ATM fee refunds. So the rewards (most of which is probably interest) is costing the banks 12x more than the ATM fee refunds.