In 2012, the Stanford Social Innovation Review reported that 60 percent of low-income neighborhoods in California didn’t have a bank in their vicinity. Astoundingly, according to data generated by the Center for Responsible Lending after the 2008 financial crisis, low-income families sometimes paid as much as $2,000 a year for check-cashing services, and Californians have been spending close to half a billion dollars per year paying the fees on payday loans. Since then, data suggests that the payday lending and check-cashing industries have only grown.
