• knightly the Sneptaur
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    3 months ago

    What service? Debit cards for postal banking accounts?

    It absolutely would be because for-profit banks would have to compete with non-profit government services…

    • NateNate60@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      What country is this?

      In the US, we have credit unions. Credit unions are member-owned not-for-profit financial institutions that offer the same services as banks.

      • knightly the Sneptaur
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        3 months ago

        And credit unions offer accounts with lower fees and higher interest rates than commercial banks, whose only advantages are having more branch offices, ATMs, and a bigger marketing budget.

        Postal banking solves this deficit by making every post office a branch of the national credit union.

        • NateNate60@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          See this symbol?

          If you have a card issued by a credit union, yours probably has this too. It means you can use any other credit union’s ATMs that have this symbol without fees as if they were owned by your credit union.

          There are thousands of credit unions across the US operating tens of thousands of ATMs. 7-Eleven ATMs are also part of this network.

          I’m not saying that postal banking is a bad idea. In fact, it’s a great idea, as a way to serve underserved communities and as a way to generate revenue for the Postal Service, if nothing else. But the idea of not-for-profit banking on a national scale isn’t exactly a new concept.

          • knightly the Sneptaur
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            3 months ago

            If you’re aware of what a back-of-card network is then you should understand how transformative a state-backed zero-fee interchange would be.

            • NateNate60@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              That’s essentially what FedNow wants to be, except the goal is to replace the debit card network.

              Trying to start a new debit card network is a chicken-and-egg problem.

              • knightly the Sneptaur
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                3 months ago

                Not when you’re a government.

                Mandate that payment processors have to support the state debit network and you’ll be on half the terminals in the country in three months.