Cashless society, forced banking, and the War on Cash

This is the real question.

I don't think the best advice regarding checking accounts has really changed. You should already have gotten out of the big banks, because they actively try to screw you. That's been true with or without the CFPB. It just takes a higher priority now.

CUs are accountable to their members, but now we've lost some assurances. We probably need to be more vigilant to ensure it's being managed properly.

In the US you have a right to pay all your debts in cash. This is enshrined in the federal legal tender law.

For points of sale, a merchant can refuse cash. In which case they have failed to earn the business of ethical consumers and you should patronize their competitor.

Buy local. You should be boycotting Amazon anyway.

If you have a paper check in your name, you must trust someone (the issuing bank, the casino, or some dodgy checks cashed business).

• checks cashed business: these tiny operations are the least secure from data breaches and the most costly. OTOH, they charge enough that they don’t need to profit from selling your data. But in the end you still have trust them not to sell your data and you can be relatively sure their infosec is the lowest grade.
• issuing banks: they’re going to get some of your data no matter what because they sit at one end of the transaction. So that much favors using them. They will get some more date when you cash out with them. Banks are rife with data abuses and notorious for breaches due to weak security. Accounts are gratis because they have mastered profitting from all possible resources (data and money). And because security is a cost they minimize as much as possible, they get breached all the time. Banks and CUs especially outsource like crazy. So you also expose yourself to multiple breach points with banks and CUs.
• casinos: they have better security than banks. At least at one point they even had better facial recognition than the FBI. Their profit model is simpler than banks: they hope that by getting you in the door, you will give them play action. I don’t imagine that they have invested as much as banks in exploiting people’s data for advertising purposes because it’s not their business and casinos really don’t want to scare people off with enshitification (because people don’t need casinos). They do get breached just as banks do but it seems to be less common according to various breach lists I’ve seen. OTOH, the casino is not a bank so the check would eventually go to /their/ bank. Though I’m not sure the extent of your data being proxied. I don’t know if the casino proxies the transaction for the bank, or if the casino just becomes a 2nd party to endorse the check over, in which case the bank would only get your name. Casinos don’t have the kyc extremes that banks do. Casinos also understand their customers want privacy and they respect that. They tend to comply with KYC to a bare minimum. Banks do not. Banks and CUs are KYC overachievers. Casinos also have a strong interest in keeping their clients secret from other casinos. Whereas banks are less worried about other banks poaching from them, at least in a targeted fashion.

So there’s your pros and cons. It’s your choice and no choice is “the correct” choice. It’s a gamble regardless.

I would love it if a bank would respect their customer’s privacy to the legal maximum and really try to earn patronage the same way casinos compete for your business. This opportunity is lost on banks. They all think customers give more of a shit about how many fractional pennies of interest they will get and have the working assumption that all customers will prostitute themselves fully, for mere pennies. And so banks are fully enshitified.