Been There done That

Reader comment on: Post Office Banking

Submitted by Lyle (United States), Feb 7, 2014 17:07

Recall that from 1911 to 1967 the post office ran a savings bank that paid 2% interest and in 1947 had about 3.4 billion in deposits. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Savings_System

It was established to provide folks a place that was backed by the full faith and credit of the government to park their money (up to 2500 after 1918) for folks that could not access banks. I agree that with the various stored money cards its not clear why the postal system would do well in this business having had it fade away after the FDIC came on the scene. (interestingly at its founding the FDIC limit was 2500 and went to 5000 in 1935, 10000 in 1950 .

If it just means the post office introduces a stored value card well the market is full of them, and that's about all you can do, since a lot of the unbanked could not get accounts due to lack of ID. In addition of course this intersects with the mutual credit union space.

Note: Comments are moderated by the editor and are subject to editing.

Other reader comments on this item

Comment on this item