> You do not need a bank account to pay for utilities in the US. I'm not saying not having one will be very pleasant though. I came to the conclusion that in t

> You do not need a bank account to pay for utilities in the US. I'm not saying not having one will be very pleasant though. I came to the conclusion that in the US, if you have everything that people usually have (SSN, bank account, credit card, residential address, phone number, car, drivers license), you will be treated well. Miss just one on list, and people will assume that something is wrong with you, and it probably triggers a few warning signs (e.g. in fraud detection systems). It may be coming from the fact that homeless and criminal elements usually miss a few on the list, so it was considered an easy signal for such pre-filtering, however, moving from a different country has the same signals, triggering multiple false alarms.