If you're paid weekly and make 12 bucks an hour, your paycheck will be about 350 bucks after taxes. BofA charges $6 or $8 (sources vary) to cash a non-customer

If you're paid weekly and make 12 bucks an hour, your paycheck will be about 350 bucks after taxes. BofA charges $6 or $8 (sources vary) to cash a non-customer check drawn on them, paychecks might be waived, or might not be. Wells Fargo charges $7.50 again, paychecks might be waived, or might not be. Chase charges $6 or $8 (sources vary) again, paychecks might be waived, or might not be. Citibank is free for checks under $5000, Capital One is also free, SunTrust is free for Personal Checks, but $7 for business checks. US Bank is $5, again paychecks might be waived, or might not be. PNC Bank is a whopping $10, again paychecks might be waived, or might not be. This is on top of having to get to the bank during 'Bankers Hours' if you have a service job, or are working poor, thats a hard proposition sometimes. While I'm no fan of Payday lenders, their rates are usurious and prey on the poor, for the underbanked, they provide a vital service. I got lucky, even though I was in ChexSystems and couldn't open an account anywhere, I had an account with BofA so I could do banking. 2-3% plus a small service fee seems like a pretty good deal comparatively. It's a good impulse to want to crack down on these practices, but until you fix the supply side issues of making banking available to everyone, you're just hurting poor people. Thats the issue often these days, we target the symptoms of the problems in society without targeting any of the root causes, so we just end up squeezing the poor tighter and tighter. You can only ratchet up the misery so much before something gives.