T-Mobile Hopes to Shake Up the Check-Cashing Industry, Too

I worked at a consumer finance startup for over 3 years with the hope that I could help direct people to bank accounts with lower fees.

Read an article like this http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/magazine/09nix-t.html?page... and you could see how this service from T-Mobile could be hugely helpful for millions of people who pay tremendous percentages of their paychecks to have the money available to them immediately. This is, potentially, very exciting. And the fact that T-Mobile is using this service as a lock-in measure rather than an additional revenue stream is big--sounds like they're in it for the long haul rather than the quick payoff.

We'll see--T-Mobile could mess this up in a million ways, but for the first time in awhile, I'm excited about the banking services for the "unbanked." If the only 'catch' is that people would have to go back to the check cashing companies, ah, this could (COULD) be huge.

And this from T-Mobile, of all places.

Their "mother company", Deutsche Telekom, is known in Germany for excessive pricing, ridiculous customer service and monopolistic business policies, including making a carrier switch away from them as difficult as legally possible.

I read from a recent expat (to the US from AU) that US payments heavily revolve around cheques - to the point that "automated debits" for payments consist of your bank mailing a cheque each week/month/whatever, and banks developing smartphone apps to handle cheques. How is this possible?

I'm 31 and I have never once had to write a cheque - I've used i think maybe 3 bank cheques (issued by the bank itself after funds are deducted so it's known to be "good") for "large" things like buying a car.

How is that you don't have standardised electronic transfers for funds, both into and out of your bank account(s)?