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Comment by orwin | Hacker News Reader

Could USPS offer limited check accounts and debit cards?

I've been twice now in WV, in counties so far away from everything, the only government presence is USPS. The only proof you're in the modern US is USPS (and a bit further a weird, small public library near a weirder Dollar tree).

Some people have trouble getting their retirement money, other are destitute who found a new, non-homeless life (but have trouble with debt collection or just lost their papers), And from what I've understood, USPS has buildings and employees present everywhere and is really trusted in those deep parts, more than anything the government does.

Wouldn't offering basic banking (and maybe limited but free internet access) be a nice addition to help the poorest in the US?

Just an idle thought I had for a while

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Yes, I’ve also thought postal banking could help drive down the visa/mastercard tax on nearly all small businesses must pay now. The government has run an expensive payment network (the mint) since before 1776, no real reason they should stop now that it’s cheaper to do.

This sounds like a “postal banking system,” some countries have done it. The US had it at one point.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Savings...

> The United States Postal Savings System was a postal savings system signed into law by President William Howard Taft and operated by the United States Post Office Department, predecessor of the United States Postal Service, from January 1, 1911, until July 1, 1967.

Bernie Sanders and Liz Warren have suggested bringing it back.

Postal banking existed in the US in some form until 1967. We could (and should) bring it back just for the reasons you stated.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Savings...

There are places in the US where the bank drives to the town once or twice a week, since there's otherwise no way to get cash or transact.

I'd argue that its passport services are a success – at this point, delivering random services at POs would have few downsides.

I'm from WV. I always figured Wal-Mart would pick it up eventually, but I think there may be laws that make that difficult.

I imagine the question is how much money there would be in it for Wal-Mart.

A lot of stores in the US used to take payments for utility companies. The idea was that as long as you were there paying that, you'd be tempted to buy things from the store.

Paying by check in the mail put a huge dent in this and then having the utility automatically debit your account pretty much put an end to it from what I've seen. I'm sure there are some areas where it still is a thing but they'd also have a high number of people without bank accounts.

For a while, utilities would only debit checking accounts, presumably because ACH payments are so much cheaper than credit card ones. A few years, they opened up to credit card payments. There seem to be a lot of people who do everything on credit cards and they must have had to change with the times.

It used to be standard for merchant banks to prevent almost anyone from charging more for credit cards transactions, as part of their contract terms, even though the merchant pays a percentage for every credit card transaction. That is what changed (I believe there were lawsuits and ultimately legislation).

Walmart has partnered with a few "financial services" companies to offer bank accounts in the past, but the partnerships never seem to last, except Green Dot.

I usually actually have a handful of checking accounts for splitting up bills, not relying on a single bank, etc. And a couple years ago I started a Chime account for my "allowance" because they were partnered with Walmart, and you could deposit cash at Walmart, well not anymore (at least not at my Walmart). I can go to walgreens, but I never need to go to walgreens, so that card has been removed from my wallet.

Many countries have something similar. In some countries it's where most people do their banking.

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