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The stereotype of check cashing places as loan-shark-esque is generally wrong - I recommend reading The Unbanking of America by Lisa Servon to get a real unders
by awillen 5y ago
The stereotype of check cashing places as loan-shark-esque is generally wrong - I recommend reading The Unbanking of America by Lisa Servon to get a real understanding of the industry.
For a poor person, a check-cashing place is generally the cheapest and most straightforward way to cash checks (and receive other basic financial services) with clear, reasonable pricing. If you're poor, acquiring the same services from a bank is not only vastly more expensive, it's also much less transparent in terms of how and when fees will be assessed.
Often this confusion stems from people who aren't that familiar thinking they're the same as payday loan places, which are just legal loan sharks and designed to trap people in an endless cycle of debt.
None of this is anything against postal banking, which I'm hugely supportive of.
- wan23 5y ago> For a poor person, a check-cashing place is generally the cheapest and most straightforward way to cash checks That's the problem, though. It doesn't matter how good or bad their service is because their business model should not exist.
- awillen 5y agoThat's a problem, but it in no way makes them sharks as the post that I was responding to said. There is a structural issue in banking, and they arose to fill a need that results from that structural issue. They do so in a fair and transparent way at reasonable prices, though, so it's unfair to describe them in predatory terms. The fact is that poor people are better off because they exist.