Cow Chips, Inc., a large fertilizer distributor based in California, is planning to use a lockbox system to speed up collections from its customers located on the East Coast. A Philadelphia-area bank will provide this service for an annual fee of $8,000 paid at the end of the year plus 10 cents per transaction. The estimated reduction in collection and processing time is one day. Treasury bills are currently yielding 5 percent per year.

If the average customer payment in this region is $3,100, how many customers are needed, on average, each day to make the system profitable for the company?