The Un’der’banked Don’t Need Banks Anymore
by Brett King
Traditionally, if you wanted to move money around, save cash, pay a bill, purchase something at a store, or otherwise have some sort of systemic access to your cash as you moved around – you needed a “bank”. In fact, you couldn’t do any of these things in the past without a bank. Despite the fact you might have opted to just use cash and stay ‘off the grid’, at some point to do a significant transaction you needed a ‘bank’.
These days, it’s getting harder and harder to be cash only, but fortunately there are multiple options that allow an un(der)banked individual to participate in the global economy without a real bank. Here are a couple examples of thriving alternatives to banks that provide the utility of banking:
Checking/Current Account
Debit Cards and Gift Cards, Western Union Account, Cash, PayPal Account, Prepaid Telephone Account, Apple Store Account, Starbucks Card, etc
The above artifacts all allow a consumer to ‘store’ cash in an account and pay at various merchants without having a traditional bank account. While they may not offer interest on savings, the fact is that most unbanked consumers likely live paycheck to paycheck and aren’t really going to be swayed by interest rates of term deposits or CDs of 1.25%.