The US Postal Service seems poised to make a whole lot of good-government nerds very very happy with a four-city pilot program that will try out an old idea whose time probably never should have ended: postal banking. From 1910 until 1966, when you went to the Post Office, you could not only get stamps or send a package or dodge bullets, you could also put some money in your postal savings account, or withdraw some after it had grown by a whopping two percent interest rate.

At its height, postal banking served some four million Americans, and before the New Deal created the stabilizing force of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, postal savings accounts were especially attractive because, unlike a bank that could go bust, the deposits were backed by the full faith and credit of the USA.

The USPS got out of the banking business in 1966, but for decades, think tanks and policy geeks have said it would be a great thing to bring back, because there are millions of Americans who don't use banks, yes in 2021. Instead, far too many Americans are unbanked — about five percent of us — and pay too much to cash their paychecks at payday lenders, (some) grocery stores, or Walmart.

Starting last month, the USPS began testing out a new system where people can cash business checks up to $500 and receive the money in the form of a gift card that can be used pretty much anywhere. As David Dayen puts it at the American Prospect, this is a big effing deal: He calls it "the most far-reaching executive action that the Biden administration has taken since Inauguration Day."

The move puts the USPS in direct competition with the multibillion-dollar check-cashing industry, which operates storefronts to allow unbanked or underbanked residents to cash their paychecks.

And if you cash your check at the Post Office, nobody's going to try to interest you in a short term high interest loan, either.