Hacker News Reader

Modernizing how? I've lived in multiple other countries and they all had pretty strict regulations around opening a bank account, even as a legal resident.

View on HN

There are at least a handful of countries that offer services like this (basic check cashing, and in some cases, accounts with balances) via the post office. Italy, France, and Japan come to mind as examples, I'm sure there are more.

(The company that I work for is a fintech that deals a lot with unbanked/underbanked communities)

Sure but what were the ID requirements. That was the OPs criticism.

Yeah, good point - I can't say what the ID requirements are for those banks. I know that for international remittances (my line of work) we need things like a national ID or passport, so it seems like it'd be along the same lines, perhaps even a little less strict because there are fewer concerns w/r/t money laundering or terrorist funding.

While living overseas, I had the option of postal banking and commercial.

My employer had a relationship with the commercial bank, vouched for me, and generally made it easy. Had I used the postal bank I would have had to jump through more hoops, bring a translator at every visit, and wouldn’t have had access to all the same services.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com