David C. Williams, USPS Inspector General

Small towns and inner-city neighborhoods are losing their access to financial services. Post offices could easily fill the void.

Drive through the dilapidated main strip in Terry, Miss., and it’s easy to see that the town of 1,063 is a hardscrabble place. And last month, life there got harder when the last bank branch in town closed, leaving in the lurch residents who have long depended on it as a convenient place to manage their money.

The same thing is happening in countless other small towns and inner-city neighborhoods across the country, which have been left behind as banks adjust to new financial realities by shuttering branches by the thousands. The vast majority of the closures have hit poor areas, and residents are often left having to rely on other types of costly financial services.

But these towns and neighborhoods all still have one beloved asset: a post office. And if ideas my agency outlined in a recent report come to fruition, those post offices could offer residents basic, affordable financial services, including prepaid cards, check cashing, bill payments and perhaps even small advances.

The Postal Service has an unmatched network of more than 30,000 post offices in virtually every community in America, nearly 60% of which are in ZIP Codes where there is only one bank branch or none at all. Many residents of these “bank deserts” are among the 68 million financially underserved adults who don’t have bank accounts or who have to rely on costly services such as check cashers and payday lenders for some of their financial needs. The underserved collectively spent $89 billion in interest and fees on alternative financial services in 2012.

via Bank on the post office to save America’s ‘bank deserts’ – latimes.com