What We Talk About When We Talk About Postal Banking

The Weekly Wonk is a digital magazine and podcast from New America focused on the ideas and policy challenges that will shape our future. In this week’s edition, Elliot Schreur from the Asset Building Program explains the dynamics and challenges around a recent proposal for the United States Postal Service to offer financial services.

Did you hear? The Post Office wants to be able to offer a loan with that book of stamps. If your head is spinning, don’t worry, you’re not alone: A new White Paper by the Postal Service Inspector General raises as many questions as it answers. Will offering “non-bank” financial services make money? Will it help the underbanked? Will people even show up to use the services?

It’s easy to say no, because you can just point to Postal Service’s reputation for inefficiency and poor customer service to say “it can’t even do the job it has.”  It’s also easy to say yes, because of the nation’s history of successful postal banking during the first half of the twentieth century. It’s hard to know which side to believe, and in truth, we won’t know until we try it.

Yet there is at least one sure sign that postal banking could make a big splash: the vociferous opposition from banks to the mere suggestion of expanded financial services at post offices.

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