On June 25, 1910 Congress established the Postal Savings System, which offered fully-guaranteed deposit accounts to all. The program was especially helpful to lowincome households who could not secure bank accounts, and to communities without local bank branches.
By 1929 the Post Office held $153 million in savings deposits and $1.2 billion by the 1930s. Postal savings peaked in 1947, with $3.4 billion in holdings for more than four million people in over 8,000 Post Offices.
The Postal Savings System highlighted the need for financial services in every community and the Post Office's ability to meet that need.
After World War II, a growing commercial banking industry began lobbying against the Postal Savings System. That pressure, together with higher commercial interest rates, and the advent of federal bank deposit insurance led to Congress ending the Postal Savings System in 1966, leaving many towns and communities without a financial institution.
“Postal banking was America’s most successful experiment in financial inclusion – a problem we face again today,” wrote professor Mehrsa Baradaran, a scholar of banking law, financial inclusion, inequality, and the racial wealth gap.
For more information on the Campaign for Postal Banking, visit: www.campaignforpostalbanking.org.
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