The path to success is straightforward.
EDIT: So I did some digging, and it appears that the US Treasury has partnered with Comerica Bank in Texas to provide this sort of service to Social Security benefit recipients [4] (because the Treasury requires electronic payment of social security benefits, and you can't leave seniors unbanked). The challenge is going to be to find Congressional reps supportive of bringing this functionality in house, which isn't unreasonable IMHO, to provide this as a utility to all US citizens. I have already fired off a FOIA request to get details on the contract between Treasury and Comerica.
[1] https://www.usds.gov/ | [2] https://18f.gsa.gov/ | [3] https://login.gov/ [4] https://www.usdirectexpress.com/
Is it a space the government wants to compete against Apple and Google? If every mobile phone in the country comes with a free integrated banking service, how do you compete? Would the government better serve by using its resources to regulate interoperability and compatibility, and rule following, than by competing?
I totally get why a free post office bank would do great things to serve the underbanked. But if the government is going to get into banking, id like to see it go a step further, more like Singapore, and be some kind of new HSA type account offering, a forced savings account that can be used to pay rent and more.
Medicare uses the latter model for claims processing -- big insurance companies bid on processing, subrogation, etc.
Are you saying the US is incapable of doing what is already being done in many other countries?
"Incapable" assumes lots of things, but practically speaking the number of things that we (the USA) "are capable of doing" is shrinking and using GDP/Person is an interesting way to illustrate the point.
We are overpaying for services that other countries have managed to solve for reasonable costs. University tuition, healthcare, building infrastructure are all ridiculously expensive in the USA, so our higher GDP/Person is largely wasted compared to most other OECD countries. Our government and the crooked ethical guidelines of our companies/organizations are why this overpricing started and continues to exist.
For those tasks which require regulatory/legal changes, the USA is swimming in peanut butter. What we "are capable of doing" largely has to do with our Legislature+Executive branches ability to find ways to make productive changes (rare) without sabotaging those same efforts (even rarer). But half of those people are rowing in one direction (team red) and the other half in another (team blue). The USA's primary policy tool is "make the most visible spectacle of brinksmanship" and has been for 10+ years.
The people/companies in the USA are capable of feature parity with just about any other country's people/companies, but that assumes that our government either doesn't get in the way or their government doesn't assist them.
Above examples are just passbook (personal) savings and misc services. Super simple.
Though I'd be open minded towards some overlap with credit unions.
