Indeed I’ve seen basic checking accounts with no interest. Then the more feature-rich accounts which offer a number of perks at either a higher fee or higher requirements to offset the fee also include interest. That’s really backwards because an anti-feature is being bundled in. By giving up interest the client should get more features, not less.

fees - either no fees, or fees are really easy to avoid

Try getting out of the paper statement fee at a CU. That’s an important one because when the enshitification of their tech crosses your threshold of tolerance, it’s important to have agency to instantly go back to analog. Having that power also creates pressure on them to not enshitify their tech in the first place.

Gratis paper statements seem much less common at CUs than commercial banks.

Also regarding fees: very hard to find CUs that give a zero FX fee when pulling cash from a foreign ATM. IIRC, there is only one CU in the US (Penfed?) that has fee-free foreign currency.

Chase is okay if you can reliably avoid fees

Unless you consider ethics. Chase is one of the worst.

You should never pay for a bank account, that’s just dumb.

I used to think that. But in my boycott on free technofeudal pushers (Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc) I’ve evolved to prioritize privacy (and thus control) over non-transparent exploitation of my data. Have you thought about why your billpay service is free? It’s outsourced, so the billpay service has to make money somehow. Of course they are selling your data. Google and Amazon want to know about people’s offline purchases so they know whether it traces to an online ad.

I also learned the hard way that Credit Unions are exempt from this

Wow… there’s a gem of knowledge for sure.

I don’t get why folks even care about interest rates when they are so negligably low anyway. When interest rates are ≤1%, I would rather get zero interest just to silence the excessive reporting, like a 1099-int for a couple dollars which serves as a kind of heartbeat signal for where your assets are kept and then having to pay your accountant to declare it. Not worth it. I would rather see the 1% go to a good cause, if not toward just improving the banking service.

I’m done with credit unions. They just create the illusion of a small org but then farm you out to big companies via outsourcing anyway.

• Most credit unions have outsourced just about every aspect of their business. They are like shell companies all working as many different façades to the same giant corporations. CUs in-house expertise doesn’t go far beyond their branding and marketing. Your sensitive financial info gets shared around with a handful of giant corporations while giving the illusion that you have the privacy benefits of a small CU.
  • billpay outsourced to 1 or 2 different billpay services nationwide
  • monthly statement generation: outsourced to the same few corps
  • statement printing: outsourced, then they charge you for it
• Credit unions spam the shit out of whatever email address you supply, thus enabling all entities handling the email to see where you bank each time the CU decides to spam you. Commercial banks are better on this in my experience. I think commercial banks have calculated that spam just angers people and drives them off, whereas credit unions are either not diligent enough to make that calculation or they are assuming their small org appearance will go a long way in obtaining forgiveness.
• Most credit unions have put their website on Cloudflare in the past few years. Which means:
  • Consumers are generally forced to expose their account credentials to a privacy-abusing tech giant (while agreeing to be accountable for damage stemming from credential leakage)
  • Consumers are generally forced to expose to their credit union their approximate physical location every single time they connect to the website as a consequence of Cloudflare. Which means if they move outside of the CUs service area some CUs will notice that and even freeze/lock the account. They tend to admit directly in their privacy policy that they collect IP addresses specifically for geolocation tracking of their customers.
  • Consumers are generally forced to expose to their ISP where they bank as a consequence of Cloudflare. And considering Trump overturned an Obama policy that required ISPs to obtain consent for collecting and selling customer personal data, there is nothing to stop your ISP from selling info about where you bank to data brokers and debt collectors. Biden did not reverse Trump’s privacy sabotage.
  • Cloudflare can at any moment decide to block you for any reason arbitrarily, and suddenly your web access to your money is gone.
  • Consumers who are behind CGNAT outside of their control are often blocked by Cloudflare. If a snot-nose script kiddie in your CGNAT pool decides to scrape some websites, CF’s excessive protectionism might kick in and block the IP which could go to you next, and you lose access to your money because CF overreacted to a harmless snotnose kid.

Being free from Cloudflare sometimes means you can login over Tor and avoid most of the problems above. OTOH many commercial banks also block Tor increasingly more frequently lately (because they also want to track your physical whereabouts). There may be some Cloudflare-free CUs that still permit Tor logins though it’s becoming harder to find them.

Gratis paper statements are important more than you realise:

If you cannot find a bank or CU that gives you the privacy of Tor, the best feature to look for is gratis paper statements and paper checks so you can scrap the website and take back your privacy. It’s more common to find gratis paper statements from banks than CUs. As enshitification of the web proliferates and more FIs join Cloudflare, gratis paper statements is an important safety net so you can ditch their tech the moment it goes sour.

Regarding apps:

Credit unions do not write their own software. You have just a few closed-source Google Playstore banking app makers who all the credit unions outsource to. Whereas every commercial bank reinvents the wheel with their own implementation. For me it’s a shitshow no matter what. I am not going to enter Google Playstore and tell Google where I bank and let Google track exactly which software version I have which also reveals what vulns I inherit, to then run a closed-source app that snoops on me in countless unknown ways. Fuck all that.

fwiw, here is an emacs version:

https://codeberg.org/martianh/lem.el#headline-11

I think what would be most useful would be a usenet→lemmy gateway, so that rich catalog of usenet clients can be leveraged on Lemmy.

I get rid of them pretty quickly by saying I have no bank account. I might start adding to that “take cryptocurrency?” so they leave with the idea that maybe they should be open to cryptocurrency.

@youmaynotknow is spot on. But consider this a very basic primer on just a small fraction of privacy abuse by banks:

• 24 banking problems solved by cryptocurrency that Bruce Schneier does not know about

So there’s 22 privacy abuses by banks to get you started. And that just barely scratches the surface.

You can somewhat ignore paragraphs 15 and 23 in terms of privacy. OTOH privacy is hand-in-hand with control and paragraphs 15 & 23 reflect control being in the wrong hands.

Banks abuse our privacy in countless ways. This could fill a book. This policy amounts to forced banking. I boycott banks. Banks have us by the balls and they abuse that power. A bank recently told me (in effect) to fuck off if I don’t have a mobile phone number to give them.

It’s impossible to define the amount in relative terms such as “average EU monthly salary +25%”,

It’s not impossible. Indexes are published. This is what they do with rent in places where rent is controlled. Landlords cannot increase rent more than an index. So they have to do the math. And in this case it’s not even a variable baseline like rent, it’s fixed, so the calculation can also be published so people need not do any math.

That’s net (take-home pay), not gross. Tax is high enough that you need to double that figure (€4,400) to get the gross pay. And just wait till you account for inflation, which the EU cash limits apparently fail to account for.

this poll shows it’s non-partisan:

https://layer8.space/@hyakinthos/112554837920009346

The left respects privacy far more than the right. But the left also has that high-taxation tendency. The outcome of that tug-of-war within left-leaning people results in ~73% embracing cash – just like the conservatives who don’t give a shit about privacy but have contempt for tax.

Beware on your next trip to Netherlands, where some bars refuse cash and conceal their contempt for cash (reference)

I just linked your post from that one because it fits well with the story.

(edit) BTW, I would like to see your workmate’s story published in a blog that serves better as a reference. It needs more exposure in a venue that’s not quasi temporary. I would even print hardcopies of it to distribute to cashless bar owners. So a nicely typeset PDF would be useful.

What country was that? I heard about a Belgian who tried to withdraw €10k from her bank account. They refused and also called the police who interrogated her and made a report. Belgian banks have cash withdrawal limits written in the contract. Even pulling out €3k raises eyebrows in Belgium. So withdrawing €30k trouble-free would probably require withdrawing €2.5k once per week over the span of 12 weeks. Is the car seller willing to hold the car for a buyer that long?

That’s not because of the cash. Even white collar workers getting paid electronically get audited because Belgium has a very high audit rate. I heard the probability of getting audited in Belgium is around 50%. Belgian auditors are extremely ambitious and highly motivated. They are employed in high numbers. The only way to avoid being audited in Belgium is to not work in Belgium.

This depends on the industry. Domestic workers and builders are often paid in cash in Europe. Belgium even writes it in law that cash wages are prohibited if you work in an industry where that is uncommon. Strange (and discriminatory) law, but indeed white collar workers are legally blocked from cash payment while other industries are grandfathered.

Indeed national laws don’t generally limit p2p cash, but the EU law encroaches on that AFAICT.

Enforceability varies depending on the scenario. Some countries have law that holds employers accountable for tax evaded by workers. Employers obviously won’t gamble, so they refuse to pay cash and cryptocurrency wages because they are scared shitless of being accountable for an employee’s evasion.

I demanded cryptocurrency payment and my employer refused on that basis. I intended to continue declaring it properly and just wanted a bit of freedom from bank dependency, but nothing could overcome the employer’s fears.

Cashier’s checks existed in Belgium a few years ago but I heard they are under fire and will be discontinued at some point.

Personal checks seem to be non-existent but I heard they can be requested but the banks give some resistance and try to steer people away from it. They only work domestically. I think if you gave a Belgian personal check to a Belgian, they would not generally know what to do with it.

Impulsive donations have been relatively killed off because cash donations are banned (I think because scammers impersonate charities). So that leaves check and electronic payment. Oxfam does not (AFAIK) carry payment terminals. Checks would make sense, but they are taboo. So they have to ask for a bank transfer, which gives donors a chance to be lazy and forget about it.