Why are U.S. credit unions not open to everyone?
Credit unions are mutually-owned (i.e. customer owned) financial institutions that provide banking services.  They take deposits from their members (customers) and loan them to other members.  Members vote on a board of directors who manage operations.   They are considered not-for-profit, but they pay interest on deposits.  They get some preferential tax treatment and regulation and their deposits are insured by a separate organization if federally accredited.  State-chartered credit unions don't have to maintain deposit insurance at all.   Their charters specify who can join.  They can be regionally based, employer based, or based on some other group with common interests.  Regulators restrict them so that they don't interfere too much with banks.  Otherwise their preferential tax and regulatory treatment would leave banks uncompetitive.   Other organizations with similar limits have gone on to be competitive when the limits were released.  For example, there used to be an insurance company just for government employees, the Government Employees Insurance Company.  You may know it better as GEICO (yes, the one with the gecko advertisements).  Now they offer life and auto insurance all over.   Credit unions would like looser limitations (or no limitations at all), but not enough to give up their preferential tax treatment.  Banks oppose looser limitations and have as much political clout as credit unions. "It's required by law.  12 USC 1759 (b) requires that membership in a credit union be limited to one or more groups with a ""common bond"", or to people within a particular geographic area. For lots more gory details on how this is interpreted and enforced, you can read the manual given to credit unions by the National Credit Union Administration, which is their regulatory agency."
I've been with my credit union for 8 years now and I love it! I also don't deal with any of the problems you are talking about. I don't pay fees at any atm, at least not ultimately. If an atm charges me a fee then it's refunded to me at the end of the month. My online banking is very good, even have an app that allows me to remote deposit checks. Oh, and my loan interest rates are really decent too.   While the banks are nickel and dimeing you to death my CU pays me every month and charges no fees. The model itself is fairly common for serving particular niche markets. A few other organizations which operate in similar setups: prepaid card providers such as NetSpend, GreenDot, AccountNow, etc; startups such as SmartyPig, PerkStreet, WePay, and HigherOne. Still, nobody else seems to be providing full-service online banking to mainstream customers the way we plan to.  We plan to have much better security than most banks, which isn't hard given the current sorry state of online banking in the US. And having an intermediary who's looking out for your interests can be a good thing. David, my co-founder Josh lays out our launch plans and why we are invite-only in his latest post. In short, we made a decision to build our own call center rather than outsource it, and that limits how quickly we can bring people on. In the United States there are some specific savings accounts, some of which have rules from the federal government (education) and some that are setup by the bank/credit Union. Some institutions have a Christmas club, where money is set aside each week or each month and then you are given access at the end of the time period. Some institutions have accounts that pay CD rates but allow you to add funds during the period. They will have some flexibility in setting the time period. I have seen accounts that are designed to save up for a big purchase, or for a specific time period (summer vacation) Ask your bank. Or better yet look at a variety of banks websites for their rate sheet. That will explain all the different account types, rates, and rules. My credit Union allows a large number of sub accounts so that you don't have to commingle the funds. I would have been tempted to dismiss your claim, but the data I found shows that you're correct. On the plus side, the growth rate in credit union market share is higher in New York than it is in California. While there is no question that bankers hate credit unions, I can't tell you why credit unions have a smaller market share in NY. Maybe the regulatory environment is part of it. Banks have a big lobby, and they pay a lot of taxes in NYC. There are lots of credit unions that are insured by the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) through the National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund (NCUSIF) instead of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). Both cover individual accounts up to $250,000. If you are looking for non-trivial returns on your money, you should consider a brokerage account which is insured by the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SPIC). In the case of SPIC insured accounts, what you are insured against is the failure of the broker (not against loss on your investments if you choose to invest poorly). SPIC insurance covers up to $500,000 in losses from an insolvent broker. You have already indicated your lack of interest in using other investments, but I am not aware of any non-insured accounts that offer higher interest than insured accounts. You have also indicated your lack of interest in investment advice, but it sounds like what you are looking for is offered by a stable value fund. Actually it seems you are not quite correct about the number of different banks in Canada. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banks_and_credit_unions_in_Canada According to this link there are 82-86 banks in Canada plus credit unions. This may still be lower than what would correspond to the number of banks in the US, scaled for canadian population. One further reason not mentioned before could be that the population density in Canada outside of the metropolitan areas could be lower than in the US, leaving to few small towns large enough (10,000+ (a guess corrected due to comment)) to support a bank. For an American it nearly impossible to open a Swiss bank account. Even a Swiss person want to open a bank account, we have to fill out a document, which asks us if we have a greencard or other relationships with the united states. Some Swiss banks have transferred the money of Americans to Singapore to protect their clients. So you see, the Swiss banks do very much for their clients. And yes, we don't ask very much about money ;) And we are a politically neutral country, but we like the United States more than Russia and of course we have enemies, like the ISIS I would strongly suggest you select an answer: all the above two cover everything I can possibly recommend, but perhaps my perspective as a person who was exactly in your shoes a year ago might appeal to you more. My first bank was Chase, and they usually give out a free checking account to students that come with leaves of 100 checks. Unfortunately, I was 24 at that time, and the max possible age to qualify was 23 or 21. Paying $25 for any number of checks was a big deal for me as I had no job, and transportation and rent was costing me $1k/month anyways. I came here and asked questions: lots of them. MrChrister, God bless his soul, recommended credit unions to me. I never knew they existed. A year later, I am a proud member of 3 CUs: I recommend Alliant, DCU and SchoolsFirst: I am their member and very proud of it! First, if you live in/around a reasonably populated urban area, and you're in the United States, I can't see why you would choose to bank with Chase, B of A, or another large commercial bank. I think you would be much better served by banking at a reasonably large credit union. There are many differences between banks and credit unions, but in a nutshell, credit unions are owned by the members, and operate primarily to provide benefits to their members, whereas a bank is owned by the shareholders, and operates primarily to make profits for the shareholders (not to benefit the customers). The banking industry absolutely hates the credit unions, so if you've ever been nickeled-and-dimed with this fee and that charge by your bank, I have to ask why you're still banking with a company that irritates you and/or actively tries to screw you out of your money? I live in California, and I've banked at credit unions almost exclusively since I started working nearly 30 years ago. Every time I've strayed and started banking at a for-profit bank, I've regretted it. For example, a few years ago I opened a checking account at a now-defunct bank (WaMu) just for online use: eBay and so forth. It was a free checking account. When Chase bought WaMu, the account became a Chase account, and it seemed that every other statement brought new fees, new restrictions, and so forth. I finally closed it when they imposed some stupid fee for not carrying enough of a balance. I found out by logging in to their Web site and seeing a balance of zero dollars; they had imposed the fee a few statements back, and I had missed it, so they kept debiting my account until it was empty. At this point, I do about 90% of my banking at a fairly large credit union. I have a mortgage with a big bank, but that was out of my hands, as the lender/originator sold the mortgage and I had no say in the matter. My credit union has a highly functional Web site, permits me to download my account activity to Quicken, and even has mobile apps which allow me to deposit a check by taking a picture of it, or check my account activity, etc. They (my credit union) are part of a network of other credit unions, so as long as I am using a network ATM, I never pay a fee. In sum, I can't see any reason to go with a bank. Regarding checks, I write a small number of checks per year, but I recently needed to reorder them. My credit union refers members directly to Harland-Clarke, a major-league player in the check printing business. Four boxes of security checks was around $130 plus shipping, which is not small money. However, I was able to order the very same checks via Costco for less than half that amount. Costco refers members to a check printing service, which is a front/subsidiary of Harland-Clarke, and using a promo code, plus the discount given for my Costco membership, I got four boxes of security checks shipped to me for less than $54. My advice would be to look around. If you're a Costco member, use their check printing service. Wal*mart offers a similar service to anyone, as does Sam's Club, and you can search around to find other similar services. Bottom line, if you order your checks via your bank or credit union, chances are you will pay full retail. Shop around, and save a bit. I've not opened a new account at a credit union in some time, but I would not be surprised if a credit union offered a free box of checks when you open a new account with them. The United Services Automobile Association has a funny legal structure: it's not a corporation and has no shareholders. Policyholders and account holders are paid any profits. In that respect, it functions very much like a credit union; technically, it's structured as a Texas-based and Texas Department of Insurance regulated unincorporated reciprocal inter-insurance exchange and Fortune 500 financial services company offering banking, investing, and insurance to people and families that serve, or served, in the United States military. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USAA Normally a company like this is a corporation so that its owners can benefit from limited liability: otherwise, if the company loses millions or billions, any one of the individual owners / members could be held liable for paying those millions and billions! However, the Texas laws which govern them as a Texas-based inter-insurance exchange also serve to limit the liability of members. The banking services are provided by the USAA Federal Savings Bank, which is structured as a  (drumroll) federal savings bank. They also own a couple of other random businesses. Bank and most Credit Union deposit accounts (including CDs) are guaranteed by the Federal government by the FDIC and NCUA, respectively.  Some state-chartered credit unions use private insurance, you'll want to be careful about storing lots of money in those institutions. I don't have an account with either of those CUs, but I do have membership at 2 different CUs.  If they accept credit card payments online via transfer from another institution, there's no reason to move your money, unless there are other benefits (higher interest rates). All the CUs would likely require is membership ($5 deposit minimum?).  If you were to get a card through Chase or Capital One, you wouldn't be expected to open a checking/savings account with them and transition over to those accounts. The problem with that is that banks create the money they lend, thus they are able to lend far more.  Individuals can only lend money that has already been created, and are at a big disadvantage.  If it weren't for the federal reserve money printing machine, it would be a viable lending scheme. "Yeah the credit union near me sucks too. Short hours, long lines and impossible parking to go with the subpar online banking and lack of ATMs. Just because the sign reads ""credit union"" doesn't mean it's a good business. Not all credit unions are created equally." Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns failed before there ever was such a thing as a Systemically Important Financial Institution (SIFI).  OP's article and the study that it is based on are referring quite specifically to SIFI's, not every bank in American history.