Money services businesses, a broad category of nonbank financial institutions running the gamut from brick-and-mortar money transmitters, check cashers and currency exchangers to more modern e-wallet and prepaid access providers and bitcoin exchangers, provide millions of Americans with financial services they cannot receive from banks.
To show how critical MSBs are to the functioning of the U.S. financial system, a 2013 Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. survey found 9.6 million U.S. households did not have bank accounts and 24.8 million households — 20 percent of the U.S. population — were underbanked, meaning they had bank accounts but also used alternative financial services outside of the banking system.
