Why does there need to be a digital US dollar? Almost 20% of the US is underbanked, and 6.5% is unbanked. A digital dollar seemingly would be even worse and work to concentrate wealth among the educated/wealthy.
The FDIC's definition of 'underbanked', is pretty broad: "...the household had an account at an insured institution but also obtained financial products or services outside of the banking system.
"Specifically, a household is categorized as underbanked if it had a checking or savings account and used one of the following products or services from an alternative financial services provider in the past 12 months: money orders, check cashing, international remittances, payday loans, refund anticipation loans, rent-to-own services, pawn shop loans, or auto title loans."
I used a money order a few years ago, so that year I was officially underbanked, despite being educated/wealthy (I have a PhD and I'm an accredited investor.)
Many low income people have smartphones actually, and use them in lieu of desktops. Not being connected isn’t the reason they’re unbanked or underbanked, you could argue moving more to digital would include more of them. Plus the US dollar is already digital.
In part they don’t have bank accounts because they’re poor, so they don’t have money to put in them. If they weren’t broke they’d have bank accounts. IMO this is more a function of wealth inequality in the US than of banking.
Think about it, you’ve got $0. Now I give you a fee free bank account. You’ve still got $0. You’re no more included in the financial system.
If they're already connected, why would moving digital include more of them in banking? They're not using physical banking now, I don't see how digital banking would convert them.
I meant having more ways to spend their money directly from their phones would allow them to avoid having to withdraw from physical ATMs, and more digital acceptance options means not having to deposit at ATMs. Those are kind of the last vestiges of the physical banking system. These problems are being solved though. Basically any time you’ve seen a “cash only” sign, it’s a blocker to totally digital banking.
Low income folks get wrecked disproportionately by the high fees associated with physical retail banking (including ATMs). They charge flat fees (like Cryptos incidentally) which function as a regressive tax on the poor. Digital banking, by virtue of not having to deal with real estate and physical assets is more efficient and cheaper.
https://www.fdic.gov/householdsurvey/