There was a time, not even 25 years ago, when getting paid didn’t require a bank account.
You could be paid by cheque. You could walk into the issuing bank, show ID, and cash it. No account. No monthly fees. No minimum balance.
Banks also used to accept Canadian currency without conditions. Today, try walking into a bank with a roll of quarters and no account and see how far you get.
Getting paid now effectively requires a bank account. And once you have one, fees stack up quietly. Account fees, overdraft fees, NSF fees.
Banks post record profits year after year, and this feels less like a service and more like a toll on earning income.
It’s not illegal. But it feels like an extra cost that doesn’t need to exist.
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I don’t see it as a minor trade-off. Access to your own pay without conditions was a real freedom, and convenience was the bait that made giving it up feel acceptable.
Convenience is the bait for many a control method
Careful now that might upset some bankers lurking here.
Move to a Credit Union. We were tired of TD bank fees and their sketchy practise of reordering daily transactions to get an NSF fee out of you.
Credit Union we have is zero fees and no minimum balance. Interac transactions between private parties are free also.
The only thing that had a fee is when a company wanted a paper void cheque, Not the online void cheque image. I think it was $2 for them to print a cheque for me.
Companies that pay via a special debit card are something else.
