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Comment by codersarepeople | Hacker News Reader

This is aimed at solving one of several problems people without bank accounts have. So let's just figure out why people don't have bank accounts and account for that:

> People who are unbanked often cite distrust of the banking system, lack of access to government-issued ID, or inability to maintain a minimum balance as reasons they don’t have bank accounts.

Seems easy enough to me. Make government-issued IDs free, make account minimums illegal for FDIC insured banks, and if you don't trust banks, you have nobody to blame but yourself (plus, if you don't trust banks, why would you trust gvmt-venmo?). These fixes would also address a lot of other problems (voter ID issues, other negatives of not having a bank account)

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> if you don't trust banks, you have nobody to blame but yourself

Well, the banks made a pretty good case for why they can't be trusted in 2008.

That doesn't mean I don't use a bank. It's just not practical to go without one, and I trust the government-backed insurance of my funds for when the bank fails, but I don't trust the banks themselves one single bit.

> I trust the government-backed insurance of my funds for when the bank fails, but I don't trust the banks themselves one single bit.

If the bank fails because they just mismanaged handling the money, that I'm sure the insurance will save the day for the customers. The Feds will come in, check the books and figure out how much each depositor should have and cover them.

But what happens if the bank fails for more malevolent reasons? Say state-sponsored hackers from somewhere that is pissed off at the US hacked in to a bank's back end systems and installed malware that corrupted the backups for a few months and then finally deleted the online records.

Does the insurance apply there? How do the Feds figure out how much everyone gets?

Even with deposit insurance, if there's a run on your bank you want the money out ASAP, because the money is only useful to you if you can reasonably access it, and waiting a few days or weeks for a check in the mail can make or break people living paycheck to paycheck.

Yes, you're absolutely right, that's why I have split my money over two banks. Hopefully they won't fail at the same time.

Many banks have free checking - with no catch (no direct deposit required, no minimum balance required, no max number of checks/withdraws)

I'm also pretty sure I didn't need to show an ID when signing up for a capital one 360 account online.. so even the ID thing is a stretch. but sure, I might accept not having an ID as a valid reason since you may need it to use your debit card and probably will for checks.

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