Tiffany Murrell, who had a $40 overdraft in 2010, was rejected repeatedly for an account.Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesTiffany Murrell, who had a $40 overdraft in 2010, was rejected repeatedly for an account.

Mistakes like a bounced check or a small overdraft have effectively blacklisted more than a million low-income Americans from the mainstream financial system for as long as seven years as a result of little-known private databases that are used by the nation’s major banks.

The problem is contributing to the growth of the roughly 10 million households in the United States that lack a banking account, a basic requirement of modern economic life.

Read the full New York Times article here.

 

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