There are many, but here is a personal anecdote. For background, I am a relatively high income software professional. Many years ago, I moved states, and in the process had to switch banks, so I closed my old account before moving.

Somewhere there was an automatic debit on one my bills for 30-50 US bucks that my bank paid, but since my account was already closed, it basically went into default. When I tried to open a bank account in my new state, I was denied.

It ends up there’s something like the credit reporting agencies, but for banks, and because of my $50 dollar accidental default, I ended up on this system. There are almost no consumer protections on it, so I couldn’t contest it, and I didn’t have any way to pay it or get it removed.

The end result is that I was unable to open a bank account for the next 5 years without a co-signer, even though my credit score was in the 700s and I had a six figure income. I was able to get credit cards, but couldn’t easily pay the bill without an account to write checks from. I had to go to check cashing places to get money orders (most banks won’t give you money orders or cashiers checks without an account), I had to cash my paychecks at the one office my employers bank had in town, and I could only receive checks for banks I could travel to. When I rented my apartment, I paid the security deposit in cash, but then had to drive around town when I got it back after moving out to try and find a branch of my landlords bank while I was on my way out of town. It was a nightmare.

There’s a whole system I fell into that I wasn’t even aware existed until that happened to me, and I consider myself a highly educated consumer compared to your average person. There are plenty of reasons to want cash in our society, even if you are not doing anything illicit or that you want to keep hidden. If, for any reason, banks are not available to you, life gets very difficult very quickly.

I still don’t see that as a reason for wanting cash - that’s a reason for wanting both laws to make the banking system act more like the credit system with more consumer recourse and “postal banking”. They could go as far as denying access to paper checks and being able to opt out of letting banks get you into overdraft situations by denying all payments that would result in overdraft.

Also, you should be able to decide which order payments go in - highest first or lowest first. Highest first can easily result in 4 small overdrafts instead of 1 large overdraft.

I'm not personally in this category, but I believe that there is a group of people who cannot bank because they're either blacklisted by companies like ChexSystems (which compile lists of people who have overdrawn bank accounts and not paid back the bank) or who have court judgements against them, in which case any money in a bank account just gets seized to pay the judgement.

That’s true - and I didn’t think about that - but, the article also profiled people on social security that get debit cards directly from the government. Do those go through the banking system? Honest question. I don’t know.

> "I think it’s fear of the unknown for many."

Is it? The poorest people are more likely to be primarily cash users, based on what I've read, e.g.:

> "...Seventeen percent of all black households and 14 percent of all Hispanic households had no bank account in 2017, according to a report from the FDIC. Some have poor credit; some work jobs where they’re paid only in cash. Cashlessness isn’t an option for them..."

From https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/12/cashl...

It seems like the answer then is not to have more private banks but to have postal banking and making it easier for people to have access to bank accounts. They could completely get rid of paper banking. If you pay all your bills electronically via debit cards, the bank and the person/company you are making payments to would know you have the money and reduce the risk of overdrafts.

Right now, the second you use your debit card. It shows up on your account.