Washington, DC – Today, Rep. Richmond (LA-02) introduced a bill that would expand access to basic financial services to millions of Americans and provide a venerable and struggling American institution an opportunity to generate billions of dollars in revenue.
“In the New Orleans area alone, 181,000 households do not have access to a full range of financial services,” said Rep. Richmond. “These are primarily low-income households that are forced to pay exorbitant interest rates to predatory lenders in order to borrow. Allowing the Post Office to offer some basic financial services would save these households thousands of dollars every year, and put the USPS on more stable financial footing.”
The Providing Opportunities for Savings, Transactions and Lending Act – or the POSTAL Act – would allow the United States Postal Service to offer basic financial services. Post office customers would be able to open checking accounts, deposit funds in an interest-bearing savings account, and receive small-dollar loans. The bill would also require that the Postal Service offer customers a convenient “Postal Card” that functions as a debit card and allows them to engage in in-store, mobile, and online transactions.
In January, the office of the Inspector General of the USPS released a report outlining the benefits of postal financial services for the public, the financial services industry and the USPS. Today, Rep. Richmond answered the call for reform that will help bring Americans out of poverty, improve economic mobility, help the USPS generate revenue.
The POSTAL Act is supported by the National Association of Letter Carriers, the national labor union of city delivery letter carriers employed by the United States Postal Service.
Very sad situation needs to be discontinued.
To carrier…..REALLY! What rock are you sleeping under? Obviously you turn a blind eye to some of the negative stories that are told about postal employees and do you know how long it takes to do a loan? If you think lines are long now when people wait to be serviced at the window, lines would be just longer if the postal service got involved in this type of offering.
Why would any Company want to put a finacial institution to cater to LOW INCOME HOUSEHOLDS to save these families “thousands of dollars every year” when the company is loosing thousands, millions and billions? Seriously, does management want to make loans to folks that no one else will take on at a some what reasonable interest rate? The interest rates charges that are exorbitant indicate they have poor credit history and are very high risk. I have a better idea, why don’t we start selling liquor.
There are lines already out the door with one window clerk… Good luck with that?? 5 day delivery or bust, so I could head down the shore for the weekend and get my tan right!!
and “TSP” says wah wah wah
Banks, Credit Unions, etc will never allow this; this goober needs to back to his buddies in Congress so they can explain why they are trying to do away with the USPS, NOT save it;
yeah right, the banks with thier billions and army of lobbiest’s are just gonna stand by and let this happen.
anything like this is a great idea and everyone gets the benefit of seeing a local postal clerk whom people trust to take of important needs like loans and other financial services and bank related transactions…there is so much more we could do from this outlook. I applaud all efforts in utilizing a structure that’s already in place to serve the needs of the public in a positive manner. the public trusts the postal service–lets keep it that way
Offer pay day loans, pawn car titles, pawn shop-knives, guns, jewelry, provide a full range of drawing people in for these services and mailing postal customers will flee to an UPS or Staples to conduct postal mailing. Post offices are to be used for mailing customers and not pawn or loan shops.
Eliminating 6 day street delivery make cents. American public considers Sat. delivery as a waste. The need or customer demand is history. A total waste of money. Revenue will continue to decline as mail volume will continue to decrease as younger generation communicate via internet, smart phones and new apps introduced continually. Online shopping will continue to grow. USPS should utilize resources to increase parcel business as is presently being conducted with Amazon. This is a lucrative market and offer positive increases in revenue.
Good question…well put carrier chuck…..seems like Representative Richmond wants to open up a can of worms with this Act….if some people don’t want postal services coming out of Staples then why would some people want banking services to come out of the the USPS. I would think that there are enough banking opportunities out there even for the low income without the USPS getting involved. The revenue at this point are the packages. Concentration should be on how they can make shipping of packages more attractive than any other service out there. Just my 2¢.
why would anyone want to invest in an organization who continues to claim they are broke?
Anyone stupid enough to trust the USPS with their financial services, deserves the hell that will come from it.
It will be only a matter of minutes, before postal mgmt. gets their greedy, sleazy hands on their money.