NEW YORK – Wells Fargo plans to test a $3 monthly fee for its debit cards this fall.

The San Francisco-based bank said the fee will be applied to checking accounts opened in five states starting in October. Maine is not one of them. The fee would be in addition to monthly service fees ranging from $5 to $30 that Wells Fargo already charges.

Although it’s unusual, Wells Fargo isn’t the first major bank to test whether customers are willing to pay to use their debit cards. Chase began testing a $3 monthly debit card fee in northern Wisconsin last year.

Other major banks also have revamped their lineup of checking accounts in the past year or so, in many cases by hiking monthly fees or adding conditions that customers must meet to qualify for fee waivers. At Wells Fargo, for example, monthly service fees can be waived if customers set up direct deposit or maintain certain minimum balances.

The industry’s experimentation with fees is partly a response to a new regulation that, starting this fall, will sharply limit how much banks can charge merchants whenever a customer swipes a debit card.

For now, Wells Fargo’s $3 debit fee test will be limited to accounts opened in Georgia, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington.

When asked in an Associated Press-GfK poll last month how they would react if they were charged a $3 monthly fee to use their debit card, 61 percent of consumers said they’d find another way to pay. If the fee was $7, the figure rose to 81 percent.