How does that follow? People make electronic payments of a few dollars millions of times a day, with the banks still somehow making money on it. Now, paying a few hundred a week isn’t feasible?
”I think when margins are thinner, it's cheaper to write checks than to set up direct deposit.”
From what I know about automation and American banks, I (perhaps too cynically) think it’s less about being cheaper than about being more profitable for the banks.
How would maintaining the infrastructure to move pieces of paper around, check them for validity, moving the necessary cash around, etc. be cheaper than scaling an existing digital system to handle 10% or 20% more customers?
It seems to me that the obvious reasons for not using a bank account are not the ones people mention in these threads. The ones that occur to me are:
- You're not a legal resident
- You're in ChexSystems
- You're subject to some sort of legal judgment or garnishment
For the majority of professional Americans, we receive our pay via direct deposit so we never see a pay check. The working lower-class still uses pay checks since they're paid on a weekly basis. I think when margins are thinner, it's cheaper to write checks than to set up direct deposit.