Here in New Zealand, there's pretty much no restriction on getting bank accounts. It's almost unheard of to not have a bank account.
Transaction fees aren't really a thing either. Most people only have to pay to withdraw money from other banks ATMs. There's no fees for bank transfers (regardless of whether it's to the same bank or a different one). Bank transfers are within the hour in the same bank, and either within the day or overnight for between different banks.
One thing that definitely has helped in this situation (somewhat counter intuitively) is that we have an oligopoly of banks, so standardisation and cooperation is simple. That's why we have chip and pin cards as standard here (and contactless cards). It's also meant that almost everywhere accepts EFTPOS.
Hell, I had to cash my first check ever today. I don't even carry cash, unless I have a specific reason to need to carry it.
I have no idea if you can get expense cards here, but it's easy to just get another card and connect it to another account, and then load funds onto it as you need.
Several of my friends have their cards attached to an account that's usually empty, and transfer funds when needed to the card. It takes literally seconds to transfer the money, you can do it on your mobile phone in the store.
If you were to only bank amongst one Credit Union here in the states you'd see similar levels of service to what you mention (other than chip & pin which is only recently deployed).
Pretty much the same but:
1. Loads of free ATMs, the ones that charge are privately owned/run typically and in shops. While banks may run them and slap their logo all over it, it's effectively just advertising, it doesn't matter which one I go to. The idea that it would matter seems really weird.
2. No fees for bank transfers, most will complete within the hour I think and are generally immediate.
3. Chip & pin has been required for quite a while now, contactless cards are extremely common.
4. Pretty much everyone has some kind of bank account, I'm not sure how it works if you're homeless or have absolutely no proof of identity/address, but there might still be things that can be done there.
Most accounts are also free, though sometimes with usage requirements (deposit at least £X + have two direct debits is common), and many will pay you ~£100 to switch to them.
Due to the way this was implemented in Europe and the fraud it enabled[1][2], I wouldn't consider it any sort of plus.
1: http://www.wired.com/2015/10/x-ray-scans-expose-an-ingenious...
I was floored when I had to sign my name (on a brand new touchscreen) in the US but EMV wasn't deployed.
Contactless payments were brand new too (I couldn't use Android pay at that point), but we'd had "tap and pay" in Australia for two years at least. In Canada, someone took a carbon copy imprint of my card. An imprint, in 2015!
I can't find the exact dates, but EMV has been in Australia for at least a decade, signatures were "deprecated" at the end of 2014 and cheques are pretty much gone now.
https://www.commbank.com.au/about-us/news/media-releases/200... says that NFC payments started in 2006, but they took a few years to really take off. Last year I could finally use my Android phone to pay pretty much everywhere (and it's more secure than an NFC credit card, because I need to unlock my phone and enter a PIN to make a payment)
Also, what's the deal with interbank money transfers in the US? All I need to send money to someone in Australia is the BSB (Bank-State-Branch) and an account number. It takes about 2 days for the payment to clear.
Instead we depend on forms of payment which have latency measured in days (checks, direct deposit) and we process debit card transactions on a delay of hours to days. If you are playing close to $0 it's very easy to make a mistake and then fall below $0. The bank has effectively trusted you not to do this, and you did it, so they charge you a fee as punishment. Except you have less than $0, you can't pay the fee.
If you do this, then your bank might close your account and put you on the ChexSystems blacklist, which will prevent you from getting any new accounts for a few years.
AFAIK ChexSystems blacklisting is pretty much the only reason to be unbanked (except by choice as a form of protest, I guess?) Simply doing proper OLTP would eliminate the weird artifact that is overdraft and entirely sidestep the problem of unbanked people.
After fruitlessly disputing the fees, I simply opened an account elsewhere and changed my direct deposit through my employer, leaving my BofA account in the red. After about two months without issue, my new bank informed me that they would be closing my account because I'd been reported to ChexSystems by BofA and blacklisted. They wouldn't tell me the reason for the blacklisting (though I obviously knew what it was). I was not even allowed to withdraw my existing funds and had to wait for a check to be sent to my home in 7-10 business days.
I ended up getting a TD Ameritrade debit card through a pseudo-checking/brokerage account they offer and have been getting direct deposits there ever since. It was an infuriating and dehumanizing process overall.
[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/halahtouryalai/2013/06/11/yes-ba...
Transfers are generally free in the USA, too.
