> Another similarity will be the lack of online banking. Many credit unions and small banks lack the scale to support that...

Huh? There are folks who sell the relevant software. My little credit union has had this stuff for years.

Yes, including bill pay and so on. I got it before big banks started advertising similar services.

I haven't seen any mention of by-phone money transfer or check cashing yet, but since I don't have a smart phone, that's may be me.

> See also: ATM access.

Credit unions banded together to solve that problem years ago. Some also pay fees for "out of network" use. (Non-banks like Schwab take that approach.)

Majority of credit unions outsource their online banking to companies like orcc. My credit union has better online banking than Wells Fargo (not hard to beat).

The ATM access do require small changes in behavior (i.e., don't forget to get cash back in Safeway), but it is quite possible to achieve.

I don't know if you've kept up with where things are at with credit unions, but my credit union's online banking is quite nice, and there's a credit union co-op network that means that ATM's which are fee-free and can take deposits are never very far away.

It would be nice to have more physical branches (maybe that's another thing a co-op network of credit unions could handle), but really, switching to a credit union was way easier than I had ever imagined.