You might want to read past the first paragraph before incorrectly claiming it’s clickbait. The fourth paragraph covers why online verification excludes a lot of people - nearly half of older Americans - and the fifth covers the building closures which remove the option many people use to fill that gap.
One thing in particular to consider is how painful MFA is for many people, especially those with marginal connectivity or disabilities, and how commonly older people are phished or have malware on their generally older, often unpatched devices. If you haven’t supported a population like this, it’s way more of a barrier than you might think.
Definitely. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen some horrid login flow and cringed to think about what it’s like for people who have visual or cognitive impairments, use a janky old phone they got on one of those lifeline plans, etc. If I’m remembering right, one test with SMS codes with a short expiration (10-15 minutes) had lose to half of older users struggling with delays and the challenge of copy-pasting or remembering only the code within that time limit.
We have really lost our way as a field for some basic user experiences and that really shouldn’t be acceptable for government services or companies people need to deal with like utilities, banks, etc.
It's a terrible policy. I know someone who is 74 and never owned a computer. They own a smartphone but only know how to use the phone app and really don't understand texting. I was shocked when I learned this and I imagine there are many people like him.
A lot of older individuals still don’t use the internet in any capacity, not even through a smartphone. For those people, effectively the only option is to visit an office.
I meant here, though I think there is also tendency in general
As a side note I think the state of current discourse has shown that anything other than concrete language presents too much opportunity to talk past each other. So I don't think talking about yimbys is specific enough (and its too tempting to strawman). Same for magas and libs, they are broad labels for a broad spectrum of people
There are other banking models that are needed. Look into Custodia Bank’s model (SPDI). Full reserve system meant to backstop high risk (but legal) businesses. They went through a multi-year lawsuit around the start of 2020 with the fed who didn’t want them to exist, ultimately lost.
Custodia Bank marks the second enterprise in this thread that attempted to gain direct access to the Fed, bypassing intermediate banks, but was rebuffed. The other was Reserve Trust.
Is it possible to obtain and make use of a Fed “Master account”?
But then it means the only people who apply will be the sort of people who tend not to even get phone screens… is that really who you want to be spending your time interviewing?
