When you have money in the bank, you can access it from anywhere—in person at your local branch, from the ATM at your grocery store, online, across town, even overseas. A checking account also makes it much easier and cheaper to pay bills—you’ll no longer have to visit a store, check-cashing center, or service provider’s office to make payments, and you won’t need to purchase a cashier’s check or pay a transfer fee to send those payments.
Instead, you can use your bank’s free online bill-pay service or—if you prefer to do things the old-fashioned and less secure way—you can write a check and put it in the mail, which is also free except for the cost of postage. The benefits of using a bank to protect your money are similar to the benefits of using a credit union.