A record low 5.6 million households nationwide remain unbanked, the federal insurer of bank deposits said Tuesday, reporting that its latest survey shows nearly 96% of all households were, in fact, banked.
According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s (FDIC) 2023 National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households, only 4.2% of U.S. households (representing 5.6 million households) lacked a bank or credit union account. That’s the lowest overall unbanked rate since the FDIC survey began in 2009, the agency said.
But, the agency tempered that report by noting that lower-income, less-educated, Black, Hispanic, disabled, and single-parent households continue to be significantly more likely to be unbanked.
Additionally, the agency reported, 66.2% of unbanked households relied entirely on cash while 33.8% of unbanked households relied upon a combination of prepaid cards or nonbank online payment services. The agency named such services as PayPal, Venmo or Cash App that those households were using to conduct transactions.
In other areas, the FDIC said 14.2% of U.S. households (19 million households) were underbanked in 2023. Those are that households had a bank or credit union account yet primarily used nonbank products and services to meet their financial needs.
The report also indicates that, of the less than 5% of households holding cryptocurrency, most are doing so as an investment and not a payment mechanism. The report states that 4.8% of U.S. households owned or used crypto or digital assets in the previous 12 months. Most (92.6%) bought the cyptocurrency as an investment, while only 4.4% used digital assets as a form of payment.
FDIC Survey Finds 96 Percent of U.S. Households Were Banked in 2023