Many low-income people don't have bank accounts and have to pay fees and incur other costs to get access to their money. Lisa Servon at The Atlantic has written"The Real Reason the Poor Go Without Bank Accounts." Read the whole thing and take a look right now at Servon's concluding paragraph:
The banking industry needs to develop different fee and service
structures designed to accommodate lower income depositors in much the
same way banks currently provide VIP treatment to high-net-worth
individuals. A good start would be to limit overdraft fees, and to
rethink the use of private databases like ChexSystems that currently
keep more than a million low income Americans from being able to open
accounts. Tellers need to remember that every customer is more than the
number of digits in his account balance and deserves service and
respect.
