Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Should the United States Postal Service Add (back) Financial Services?

WITH a workforce of just over 491,000 in 2013, the United States Postal Service (USPS) is second only to Walmart among civilian employers in America. But it still employed more than 200,000 fewer people last year than it did just nine years earlier—when it handled nearly 500m more pieces of mail and had almost 2,000 more retail offices. The rise of e-mail has left America’s massive postal service with far less to do, and it has been scrambling to find ways to raise revenue.

Earlier this year its inspector-general released a white paper suggesting that post offices should begin offering financial services, such as cheque-cashing, small loans, bill payments, international money transfers and prepaid cards to which salaries or benefits could be transferred. The reasoning is simple: a lot of Americans have scant access to banks and a lot of post offices have too little to do.

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