The United States Has A Second Public Bank
Washington, DC — American Samoa is finally getting its own full-service bank — and successfully creating only the second public bank in the United States.
The Federal Reserve is allowing the Territorial Bank of American Samoa access to the U.S. payments system nearly two years after the bank first applied.
The decision is a boon to the remote U.S. territory in the South Pacific, where more than half of the households are at, near or below the federal poverty level. Officials across the seven islands that comprise American Samoa have been scrambling for a way to maintain local banking services since the Bank of Hawaii announced in 2012 it was leaving the territory.