And banks have a (in the US) deservedly poor reputation amongst the poor.
Less common now (maybe barred now?), banks would take the day's transactions and apply them in an order which deliberately fucked the customers. Let's say your balance is $100, and you get paid $1500 today. But you're living paycheck to paycheck so you delayed bill payments until today. You pay 5 bills, total value of $1000 (you have enough, technically). The banks would order the execution of those transactions to hit you with overage fees for as many of the payments as possible. If you noticed it right away, they'd refund the money with a phone call (and a few hours of your time on hold). Otherwise, you're just out a couple hundred dollars. All your bills will have been paid, but you would have been hit with up to five $25-75 overdraft fees before your deposit was finally processed.
Or how Wells Fargo was creating accounts for people without their consent, resulting in people who had enough money in their accounts suddenly not and being hit with fees and penalties for their trouble.
[0] They'll also change these in the fine print periodically. My free checking was a $1000 minimum with Bank of America. I'd switched to USAA for most things, but they have no physical branches. Occasionally needing a real bank, I left the $1000 in my BoA account, then one month I got hit with a fee. Turned out they'd bumped the minimum to $1500, found the letter and it was indeed small print indicating the change to the small print, buried in 10 or so pages of material about my account.
Use a local bank or credit union.
Gas stations and some other companies 'susceptible to fraud' Have the ability to withdraw cash before the whole bill goes through. So the swipe has $70 withdrawn, then redeposit it (with a long delay), and then charge your bill. So you end up with multiple overcharges for one transaction if the first withdrawal is too large.
Account features like paying/auto-transfer from savings being disabled if you trigger arbitrary rules.
Normal banks and even most credit unions are purposefully exclusive in policy. Though I imagine a lot of it is "this is just how it's done" than purposeful. Though it does all feel pretty hateful after banking at military banks, since there is a working model right there.
An Ivy League professor who spent 4 months working in a South Bronx check-cashing store says we're getting it all wrong http://www.businessinsider.com/check-cashing-stores-good-dea...
If you have good credit (which usually requires a well documented reliable income, and no outstanding unmaintained debt from say, a college education or medical condition), if have the $20 or so to spend to keep the account open and in good standing, if you have the time and patience to make sure you never accidentally overdraw or under-use (so as not to get hit with costly fees).
Then sure, a bank account is "free" in the US.
If any of the above doesn't apply to you, then you might have some troubles. And there are a lot of businesses that exist to take advantage of (typically poor) people who have had troubles with real banks.
Yes, account maintenance fees are lame, but there are banks that don't have these. They've only recently become widespread for your typical checking account. Banks are getting more aggressive since the myth that using banks somehow benefits the customer is dead (they no longer pay interest, and mostly just laugh when you complain).
For the other things, yes, if you want use your bank account to pay, you have to make sure it has money in it. Is that some sort of problem? Do you expect a bank account to be a license for free money, or this to just automatically handle itself? I don't get it. You say people want bank accounts but can't get them because they don't have the "time and patience" to manage them? Isn't that a good reason not to give them to them?
We do, in fact, have strict banking regulations and a federally-backed insurance program to protect depositors in mismanaged institutions.
I guess the point is that people always paint the U.S. as if it's some wasteland where we kick the teeth of everyone with a net worth < $1M. That's not the case. On further inspection, as in this thread, you'll find that many (though not all) such complaints are someone attempting to craft a sob story out of the fact that we don't live in a rainbow world where bank accounts magically fill themselves up.
I found this out when I went to try to open a joint account with a business partner and got denied. We ended up opening the account at an institution which I already used, instead.
(Genuine question: I don't know if they are any better in that regard, or not.)
The credit union that I'm banking with doesn't have a minimum account balance or account fees: https://www.firsttechfed.com/bank/checking/carefree_checking
Am I missing something?
Your experience with local credit unions is the same as mine. If you come in with $100 you can open an account.
Anyway, getting back to the original question - if credit unions are indeed much more flexible wrt opening accounts, and not require account fees, why are there so many people without accounts? Is it because some areas simply don't have credit unions?