Here's an article that's slowly becoming relevant in today's market. It's about servicing a part of society who have no bank accounts or have no access to credit.
(from
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...653666,00.html)
Profiting from the Unbanked
By Anita Hamilton / Norcross
"Aurelio Leonel Alvarez-Rosales earns about $300 a week painting houses in the sprawling suburbs north of Atlanta. He lives paycheck to paycheck and often has nothing left over at the end of each week. So on Friday nights, when Alvarez-Rosales, 21, goes to cash his check, he pulls into the parking lot at the Norcross branch of Banuestra, an alternative financial institution aimed at serving the estimated 40 million adults in the U.S. without bank accounts. For him, every dollar counts, and compared with the 24-hour Atlanta Check Cashers outlet down the road, which charges a 3% fee to cash a payroll check, Banuestra is a bargain, taking just 1%, or $3, out of his weekly pay. He doesn't even consider the Wachovia bank across the street on Jimmy Carter Boulevard. It closes too early, and more important, makes potential customers like Alvarez-Rosales jump through too many hoops to get service.
Banuestra is one of the new breed of financial-service providers--which now include Wal-Mart--that aim to marry the convenience of a check casher with the relative security of a bank. By offering lower basic check-cashing fees along with debit cards and reasonably priced consumer loans, these businesses hope to pocket a chunk of the more than $10 billion in fees that check cashers, payday loaners and pawn shops collect each year. Long ignored by traditional financial institutions, the unbanked get their modest earnings shaved even thinner by the high fees they pay simply to cash their paychecks. That's beginning to change as banks seek out new revenue sources and the unbanked enjoy a little more financial flexibility."
Read more:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...#ixzz1cAqMz0TX