It’s more difficult than ever for Americans to open and maintain a checking account. According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, 1 in 4 households is either unbanked or underbanked, meaning it has a bank account but uses alternative financial products like payday loans or prepaid debit cards. The percentage of Americans who were unbanked in 2009 was 7.7%; that has risen to 8.3% and doesn’t seem to be stopping. Why? Banks are becoming too expensive. Free checking is becoming a relic as banks add monthly maintenance fees and charges for services like getting a bank-statement copy or closing an account. This is mainly in response to the Consumer Financial Protection Act, which closed off other forms of revenue for banks like overdraft fees, but the effect has been leaving more and more lower-income Americans without a convenient and inexpensive place to conduct basic financial transactions. Those who can’t afford the fees are increasingly turning to alternative banking solutions — most of which have outrageous fees of their own — to cash checks and gain access to credit, financially squeezing them even further.
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5. More Americans Are Unbanked
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