[stephen_g]

The whole idea of being 'unbanked' or 'underbanked' is so foreign to me (as an Australian). The whole state of banking just seems so antiquated in the US...

I'm 26, and I've never written a cheque. Public schools over here have (or at least had, not sure how it works today) programs where every student would get a bank account in the first grade with no fees (until they finished study). You'd actually bring in your bank book and deposit money (you did have to visit the branch to withdraw with a parent to sign for it). Once you reached 13 years, you could get a debit card (this was 2003 for me), and then I got Internet banking when it started getting popular in 2006 (I was in the 10th grade). Internet transfers have pretty much always been free and are usually overnight (or immediate if it's to another account at the same bank).

By the time I graduated University, and would have had to start paying fees, the state of bank competition meant that it was pretty rare for any personal banking to charge fees. I now have three personal transaction ('checking') accounts and two savings accounts across two different banks, and none of them charge fees (My company account is the exception, at $10 a month).

Pretty much everybody here has bank accounts, so cheques are pretty much unheard of (mostly used by people over 60), everybody is paid into bank accounts, you pay taxes and bills electronically, etc... Surely it's similar in Europe? The US just seems like a different world.

[SyneRyder]

> Public schools over here have... programs where every student would get a bank account in the first grade with no fees

I think those are actually promotional programs run by the banks (but I agree they're a good thing). I'm 10 years older, but we were all given Commonwealth Bank Dollarmites accounts. There's more info on the Dollarmites program here, apparently schools get affiliate fees & commissions for every deposit the children make ($5 for every account opened, 5% commission on every deposit):

https://www.commbank.com.au/personal/kids/school-banking.htm...

> the state of bank competition meant that it was pretty rare for any personal banking to charge fees

That might have changed, last time I checked the major Australian banks all (except NAB) charged a $5 monthly fee, unless you agreed to setup an automatic monthly deposit of at least $2000. You used to be able to get fee-free accounts so long as you maintained a minimum balance level.

[falsedan]

> Commonwealth Bank Dollarmites

I still have the plastic piggy-bank somewhere (and a Fat Cat one, to really date myself).

By the time I went to uni, I had enough saved for a brand new Pentium Celeron system. It sure helped that interest rates were 10-15%…

[SyneRyder]

> I still have the plastic piggy-bank somewhere (and a Fat Cat one, to really date myself).

We're probably a similar age, I met Fat Cat on an Ansett flight once ;)

But clearly customer acquisition at a young age is huge for banks - I'm part of a focus group for Westpac, and recently they tested several different designs for piggy banks.

(Another initiative is already public, where they've giving $200 to every child born in Australia this year. Catch is, the parents have to open a Westpac account to claim it, and the money can't be withdrawn until the child turns 18.)

[flukus]

> I think those are actually promotional programs run by the banks (but I agree they're a good thing)

Commonwealth bank was government owned at the time.

[stephen_g]

Yep, my first account was through the Dollarmite program too.

Looks like you're right on fees - I didn't realise. One (NAB subsidiary) doesn't have fees, and for the other two transaction accounts I don't get charged the $4 p/m fee because I have my salary put into the savings account they're linked to.

[VLM]

"The whole idea of being 'unbanked' or 'underbanked' is so foreign to me"

I explained it to Korean coworker that our debtors prison is implemented as a house arrest or like an economic parole release.

So if you owe child support because you're unemployed you can't use a bank because the money would disappear. You can't get money from a job in the system it would disappear so cash pay please. Or you can't go to the courthouse and get it fixed because lawyers cost money and see above you're unemployed. Once you're in debtors prison there's a whole bunch of things you can no longer do, just like being under house arrest or parole. For example, for a couple decades 90s-10s we had universal default as a stated written policy. We still have it, just unstated, which confuses foreigners. On paper we don't have universal default since 2010 or so. In practice we still have it today, more or less.

Adding to the complexity we do have actual debtors prisons most famously in the rural south but to some extent or another there are some everywhere.

I guess another way to explain it is part of our culture is explicit and written and people read it, like generally speaking the bible or the -ez single page income tax form. Then there's a layer thats written and people make a great show of not reading like mortgage or car loans or insurance contracts. Next down there's unwritten stuff that people understand like the debtors prison thing is I think fairly uncontroversial and reasonably well informed. Below that there's stuff we kinda unconsciously by osmosis know, like the "unbanked"="house arrest debtors prison" or "underbanked"="financial equivalent of parole complete with abused arbitrary rules". At the bottom there's weird esoteric stuff like non-propaganda related economic theory and history. And the level of awareness is extremely uneven across the entire nation (fairly uniform across subcultures, mostly).