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Comment by azeotropic | Hacker News Reader

What exactly prevents people from cashing checks at the issuing bank, or walking into a bank or credit union with their paycheck and opening an account? Or cashing it at a Wal-mart or a 7-11, which have low fees? These people may trapped in poverty, but ultimately not by the check cashing/payday loan business.

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Many banks have a tiny number of branches so good luck finding one to cash a check. Low fees are rarely low when you're talking a minimum wage income. Walmart's 3$ fee for anything under 1000$ works out to 1/2 an hour of work. Picture spending 1/2 an hour of your salary every 2 weeks simply to get paid. Now make that worse by having 3 jobs...

I had no idea this was the case. That's shocking.

If I need cash, I walk into a Chase branch [Not my bank, but conveniently near a Thai Restaurant I like to visit] and just ask for cash advance against my VISA card. Done by a teller, there's no ATM fees.

Which cc does not charge interest before the thirty day grace period with cash advance?

Use a debit card which has no fees or do us banks not offer those

Is it a cash advance if you're using a debit card? Isn't that just a withdrawal.

The op terminology must have been off.

I think the intent was to say that it avoided ATM fees, but not anything about other fees.

Being poor is very expensive, and I think a lot of people have no idea just how crazy and awful finance in small numbers is and what that does to people's lives.

_Nickel and Dimed_[1] is oldish, but still highly relevant, if you want to read a depressing book.

[1] http://barbaraehrenreich.com/nickel-and-dimed-by-barbara-ehr... https://www.amazon.com/Nickel-Dimed-Not-Getting-America/dp/0...

CC cash advances are almost as bad as payday lending, why on earth would you pay a fee of 3-5% of the amount borrowed and 18-25% interest that compounds daily starting on the day the advance clears? Just use an ATM and take money out of your checking account..

Regulations cost money. Unfortunately that disproportionately falls on the poor. :-(

That's a poverty problem not a banking problem. If you keep a $1000 balance in a checking account, your bank is making $5/mo from your interest.

Like every other thing poor people can't afford, it could be solved by UBI/EITC/negative income tax, or direct service if you like big government, but banking isn't special.

High fees. I had to do that at Key Bank when I sold and bought and house due to some screw up.

IIRC, the fee was $10, I had to provide my ID, secondary id and provide a fingerprint.

You can't cash checks at the bank they were drawn off for free anymore, since about 10 years ago.

I've never heard of this. How could this possibly be true? The check is a note to the bank of a client that they want to pay someone. The bank is providing the service to their client, not the recipient. What bank?

In the UK at least all the supplied cheques I've seen for many years are pre-approved crossed. That is, they are explicitly not to be paid to the bearer in cash, but only into an account held by the named recipient.

This is the case in Australia too, cheques come with “|Not Negotiable|” pre-printed on them, meaning they cannot be cashed, only deposited to the recipient’s account. The words mean something completely different in the US, and writing them actually completely voids the cheque.

I wonder if you could put “for deposit only” in the endorsement spot to get the same effect. But why would you want to dictate how the check is used?

Here’s the best explanation I’ve found:

https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?s=0a4ad0b9...

Bank of Slumerica does this for one. It's funny because on the face of it, they're inducing their customers to commit fraud every time they write a check!

This article is from 2004: http://tucson.com/news/local/check-cashing-fees-starting-to-... -- so it's been going on for awhile.

I remember hearing someone sued BoA(?) for "failure to honor the face value of a check" and lost. After that, fee's started spreading. I can't find an online reference to this story.

Wells Fargo et all will charge you $10 to cash even with their name on it.

Chase charges $8 to cash their own check. I asked if they’d waive it for the disabled beneficiary of an FBO (for-the-benefit-of) account. They wouldn’t.

Big banks suck.

Use credit unions or small, local banks and you likely won't have this sort of problem.

When someone needs to able to walk to a branch (bus fare both ways is even worse than most check cashing fees) only a very well placed small, local bank will do. Big banks, not to mention check cashing and Western Union outlets are much more dense on the ground. TANSTAAFL.

The credit union I am a member of (starone) charges $5 for non-members to cash checks from members.

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