Advocates for the poor say the pandemic is an opportunity to get Americans without bank accounts into the traditional financial system. Millions of workers without direct deposit are having to wait for weeks to get their federal relief payments.
In this April 24, 2020, photo, people maintain social distancing and wear face masks due to COVID-19 concerns, while waiting to enter a check cashing service center in the Brooklyn borough of New York. While millions of U.S. workers have already received a quick relief payment from the federal treasury through direct deposit, millions of others without traditional bank accounts must wait weeks for paper checks.
In the six weeks since the pandemic shut down much of the U.S. economy, more than 30 million American workers have filed for unemployment insurance. Congress passed a $2.2 trillion economic rescue package. In Houston, Ta’Mar Bethune, a 41-year-old mother of four grown children who is raising a grandchild, is likely to wait a while. As a younger woman, she struggled for years with affording bank account fees until her account was closed. In the 1990s, she also was a victim of identity theft and never fully recovered.
Some of those services have been criticized for being predatory and marketing to black and Hispanic communities, which are disproportionately unbanked. Roughly 17% of black households and 14% of Hispanic households were without a bank account in 2017, compared with just 3% of white households and 2.5% of Asian American households, the FDIC said.
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