Rural America Turning to Grocers, High-Fee ATMs as Banks Leave

I use Ally Bank and they offer $10 reimbursement for ATM fees every month and they have a wide network of fee-free ATMs (at most 7-11s and a few other common stores). If you look harder, you can find accounts without any limits (e.g. Charles Schwab), and many credit unions support deposits in co-op ATMs (probably not helpful if there aren't any in rural towns). The only reason I go to banks is to withdraw cash in specific denominations for paying our baby sitter, but you can usually get the same thing if you ask nicely at a grocery store.

I don't see much of a reason why people need physical banks anymore. Withdrawals can happen with an ATM, deposits can happen in mobile or mail, and loans are increasingly available online. The only thing I can think of is business owners needing to make deposits and withdrawals frequently.

There are absolutely transaction fees (also called processing fees) involved, but they're usually paid by the merchant. That's why many shopowners usually post required minimum purchase amounts for credit cards (i.e. you must buy $10 or more in order to pay with credit card).

It varies but typically ATMs prefer charging the card issuer rather than the customer. So if you're using a bank that doesn't charge when you withdraw money out of its network, then it's essentially free. That's very common with online banks.

Is it? The poorest people are more likely to be primarily cash users, based on what I've read, e.g.:

> "...Seventeen percent of all black households and 14 percent of all Hispanic households had no bank account in 2017, according to a report from the FDIC. Some have poor credit; some work jobs where they’re paid only in cash. Cashlessness isn’t an option for them..."

From https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/12/cashl...

Somewhere there was an automatic debit on one my bills for 30-50 US bucks that my bank paid, but since my account was already closed, it basically went into default. When I tried to open a bank account in my new state, I was denied.

It ends up there’s something like the credit reporting agencies, but for banks, and because of my $50 dollar accidental default, I ended up on this system. There are almost no consumer protections on it, so I couldn’t contest it, and I didn’t have any way to pay it or get it removed.

The end result is that I was unable to open a bank account for the next 5 years without a co-signer, even though my credit score was in the 700s and I had a six figure income. I was able to get credit cards, but couldn’t easily pay the bill without an account to write checks from. I had to go to check cashing places to get money orders (most banks won’t give you money orders or cashiers checks without an account), I had to cash my paychecks at the one office my employers bank had in town, and I could only receive checks for banks I could travel to. When I rented my apartment, I paid the security deposit in cash, but then had to drive around town when I got it back after moving out to try and find a branch of my landlords bank while I was on my way out of town. It was a nightmare.

There’s a whole system I fell into that I wasn’t even aware existed until that happened to me, and I consider myself a highly educated consumer compared to your average person. There are plenty of reasons to want cash in our society, even if you are not doing anything illicit or that you want to keep hidden. If, for any reason, banks are not available to you, life gets very difficult very quickly.