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Debra Hopper does most of her banking during cigarette breaks at work.

“You can see that I have all of my transactions on my phone,” she says, holding her smartphone. “It’s not an app, it’s just texts.”

However, technically Hopper’s not checking a bank account. She gets her paychecks from the power company where she works  deposited directly onto a pre-paid debit card.

Hopper says she ruined her credit as a teenager and wants to rebuild it before she opens a bank account. So until recently, she paid her $550-a-month rent with money orders. That meant she had to go to Walmart or a check-cashing place and then mail the money order in and wait for it to clear.

But since December, Hopper’s used a service called PayNearMe. It allows her to swipe her debit card in a store to send money to her landlord.

“I know that my rent or my payment is getting processed immediately,” she explains. “So I don’t have to worry about slow mail or it getting rerouted. I know they’re going to get it by the time I leave the store.”

PayNearMe is one of a series of new companies and traditional banks developing products for the unbanked -- a good thing, says Jennifer Tescher, the president of the nonprofit Center for Financial Services Innovation. “We’re seeing a lot of innovation in this market because people are recognizing that there’s an opportunity.”

Over one in four U.S. households are either unbanked or underbanked, according to a recent study by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. That means they don’t have access to a traditional bank account or turn to bank alternatives, like check cashers or payday lenders, for some of their financial transactions.

There are many reasons why someone might be without a bank account.

“Some people have had bank accounts and they’ve been hit by overdraft fees and have been blacklisted,” say Lauren Saunders, an attorney with the National Consumer Law Center. “They might not think they have enough money to make it worthwhile, and bank accounts are increasingly expensive.”

Still others might be undocumented or they simply might not trust banks with their money.

Historically, banking alternatives have charged high fees for their services, often because consumers had few alternatives. But companies like PayNearMe are hoping to fill this void and offer consumers increased convenience at a fair price. People can pay cash for things from car loans to Greyhound bus tickets at 9,000 different 7-Elevens or Ace Cash Express stores.

“It’s as though we lent the point of sale terminal at the 7-Eleven store to other businesses,” says Danny Shader is the company’s CEO. “So that those business suddenly had thousands and thousands of cash registers in the community where they could do business with consumers.”

PayNearMe’s business model is based on signing up companies -- landlords, lenders, and Greyhound, among others -- which in turn give their customers a bar code or a card with a magnetic strip they can use at select stores. There, the clerk scans the barcode or swipes the card and takes the customer’s money, as if they were buying soda or candy. However, the money actually goes to the company. PayNearMe charges a small fee for the service, which the company can  absorb or pass along to the customer. Shader says it’s usually not more than $4, which is typically less than walk-up bill payers or money orders.

The increasing number of companies interested in serving the unbanked market is positive delevopment, says Keith Ernst, an associate director with the FDIC.

But he also worries that some of these bank alternatives tend to be one-off products or services – a way to purchase things or pay bills or send money to family. This differs from traditional banks, where services can grow with the customer’s needs.

“An overriding question remains: what else comes from the relationships [consumers] strike up?” he says.

With a bank, a consumer might start with a savings account and eventually expand their relationship “to save for college, to save for short-term emergency needs, to get an affordable car loan and the like,” Ernst explains.

Another concern is that consumers typically need many of these one-off services to address all their financial needs.

“They’re having to knit them together and try to create a financial identity for themselves,” says Tescher, of the Center for Financial Services Innovation. “And hope that [identity is] recognized when they might find themselves needing more traditional credit or needing to interact with a more mainstream player.”

In other words, a whole slew of a la carte services might not help the unbanked get ahead in life long term.

The little boy survived being held by a killer for nearly a week in an underground bunker. He's said to be acting "like a normal kid" now, and like most children he's likely to be resilient. But experts say he's likely to remember his ordeal for the rest of his life.

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Thousands of Tunisians are protesting in the streets after the assassination of opposition leader Chokri Belaid, a critic of the moderate Islamist group that dominates the country's government. Steve Inskeep talks with Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institution's Doha Center.

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Japan's Nikkei index hit a 4-and-a-half-year high today after jumping almost four percent. Now, you could give all the credit to a weakening yen which is making Japanese exports cheaper abroad and thereby boosting business. But, Japan isn't the only place where the stock market is booming right now -- markets in the U.S. and even Europe are up as well.

Boeing is speaking out this morning about the problems its 787 Dreamliner is having. The planes have been grounded around the world -  after a series of incidents including a fire onboard a Dreamliner in Boston. But in an interview this morning, Boeing remains upbeat about the plane's future.

Now to the ongoing battle between Samsung and Apple. The two have been duking it out for the number one spot in smartphones for some time. And now the Korean electronics maker is planting a flag right in Apple's backyard. It's building a one million square foot research and development center in Silicon Valley and dedicating $100 million to fund emerging technologies.

And finally, to a bit of retirement news. We learned this morning that the U.S. postal service is planning to retire Saturday mail delivery to cut costs. Hasbro is retiring the Iron from Monopoly and replacing it with a cat. A guy named Jim O'Neil is retiring as chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management. O'Neil is the guy who coined the term BRIC's, which in the world of economics stands for Brazil, Russia, India and China -- the four key emerging markets. He starting using that term in 2001, to help sell investors on emerging markets. And since then, according to Barrons, the Russell BRIC Index has gained 363 percent.

The U.S. Postal Service is expected to announce Wednesday that letters will no longer be delivered six days a week. The move starts this summer and should save $2 billion. Saturday package delivery, however, will continue.

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Scottie the dog and the others get a new competitor. Now, which of the eight game pieces would you most like to use? And will you miss the iron and its handy handle?

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Thousands of kids have been exposed to toxic levels of lead around illegal gold mines in northern Nigeria. After months of delay, the Nigerian government has released money to clean up the lead in these areas.

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Japan's Nikkei index hit a 4-and-a-half-year high today after jumping almost four percent. You could give all the credit to a weakened yen which is making Japanese exports cheaper abroad and thereby boosting business. But Japan isn't the only place where the stock market is booming right now. Markets in the U.S. and even Europe are up as well.

The upswing comes as investors are feeling more confident about the eurozone debt crisis, U.S.'s fiscal future, and the stability of China's growth.

"January was the first month that individual investors stopped buying so many bonds and went into stocks, that's a positive thing," says Juli Niemann of Smith Moore & Company.

But all the optimism may bring new risks. According to Bob Mckee of Independent Strategy, the markets may have gotten ahead of themselves.

"The U.S. is growing just at only two percent a year, Europe is not really growing at all, Japan is also stagnant. Unless we see faster growth, the markets will get worried again that governments can't meet their promises on their fiscal and public finances," says McKee.

The decision has been long anticipated. The Postal Service continues to lose billions of dollars a year and is looking for ways to cut costs. Eliminating Saturday delivery of first-class mail (but not packages) might save it about $2 billion annually.

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Also: What to do when a book makes you cry on public transportation; Amazon launches its own currency; and Ping Fu's memoir comes under attack.

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UPDATED (11:25 am EST): The United States Postal Service says it will suspend regular Saturday mail delivery starting Aug. 5.

What is clear is why the USPS wants to scale back regular delivery by a day -- doing so will save an estimated $2 billion a year. What’s not clear is if the agency can legally just stop stuffing mailboxes on Saturdays.  

“There’s a requirement that’s still applicable by Congress that the postal service still deliver six days a week,” says Gene DelPolito, president of the Association for Postal Commerce, a trade group representing businesses that rely on mail delivery. 

Since the post office will still deliver packages on Saturday, he says it might be able to get around the Congressional requirement on a technicality. According to DelPolito, what’s really happening is the Post Office is calling Congress’s bluff.

“They’re going to be facing off with each other, and I guess it depends on which one blinks,” he says.   

Jerry Cerasale, who is in charge of government affairs for the Direct Mail Association, says all of its 2,000 members will have to make some changes. For some, that will be a painful process. 

For others, “it will not, as long as the postal service maintains a service standard so they know when the mail is going to get into someone’s house," says Cerasale.

 Cutting Saturday delivery will reportedly shave off about an eighth of the USPS’s total annual shortfall. And for the rest of us, it could mean two junk mail days a week. 

 

Two stories about gay rights are breaking: Leaders of the Boy Scouts are debating whether local troops should be allowed to have gay members and leaders; and the Pentagon is reportedly looking to extend some benefits to the same-sex partners of military personnel.

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Japan's Nikkei index hit a four-and-a-half year high today after jumping four percent. U.S. markets are also near record highs. But as investors pour money into stocks, there are fears that the bond market could suffer. Just last month, investors moved $74.4 billion out of bond funds and into stock funds.

So, what does this trend mean for you?

According to Paddy Hirsch, Marketplace senior producer of Personal Finance, interest rates on bonds are likely to increase while older treasury notes and bond funds may lose value. But Hirsh's advice: don't panic. Instead, he recommends reviewing your portfolio and possibly tweaking bond investments.

To hear about different ways to adjust your bond holdings, click on the audio player above.

Since 1856, wheat has been traded on the floor of the Kansas City Board of Trade. In the old days, there would be a swarm of traders around the pits, shouting orders, making those crazy hand signals you've seen in the movies, but that will end later this summer.

Parent company CME Group (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) announced on Monday that it will move all wheat trading to Chicago.

Joe Barker buys and sells contracts on the exchange for hard red winter wheat, the kind of wheat used to make bread. He's the branch manager of CHS Hedging, and his office is in the same building as the Kansas City Board of Trade. He’s just two floors above the trading pit. But Barker does almost all of his trades electronically.

“Taking care of that clerking function has really cleaned up the paperwork part of what we do, and that’s made us more efficient,” Barker says. “We can handle more customers and we can do it for lower costs, and it’s helped our customers. Their margins get better because we’re able to charge them less.”

In 2007, Barker says about 80 percent of his branch's trades were completed on the floor of the exchange. Now, it's less than 5 percent. That's the way the industry has been moving. Over the last decade, exchanges in Chicago, New York and Minneapolis have all closed or merged with larger exchanges.

In Kansas City, CME Group says June 28 will be the last day for trading wheat in-person.

Michael Braude, who was president of the board of trade from 1984 until 2000, notes that, “For 157 years, the Kansas City Board of Trade was an integral part of the community. I used to tell people when I would take them and give them a tour of the floor that it was the place in Kansas City where more money changed hands than any place else."

Now, that money flows from computer to computer in nanoseconds.

Jeremy Bernfeld is a reporter with Harvest Public Media.

Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas is happy to admit he's a tech geek. The musician, producer, philanthropist now has the title Director of Creative Innovation at the chipmaker Intel.

This week, we are talking to notable folks in the tech world about what could be the next digital frontier -- not the Internet of webpages, but the Internet of things, of interconnected objects.  We caught up with Will.i.am at the recent MacWorld/iWorld conference in San Francisco to get a sense of his creative process and ask him if there's any truth to reports of him moving out of music to learn coding -- writing software with computer languages.

On his future career path:

"I'm not going to quit music, I'm going to continue to make music. But I want to code because I would like to contribute to how music is experienced, and the way to do that is through coding."

On the Internet of things:

"Everywhere that we go in the world, the things that we come across aren't intelligent. Like this wall that I'm looking at, it's just separating the room from the other side. In actuality, that wall should be intelligent. Nobody thinks of it like that. That's why when you go into a house, you need to put a TV on it, instead of the wall being the display system. I think what's going to come is the Internet of things...The next ten years is nuts. That's why I want to code."

To hear Will.i.am share his thoughts on how technology will influence music and other everyday experiences, click on the audio player above. And listen to our previous interview with Will.i.am where he discusses his work to bring better science and technology education to U.S. schools.

This final note today, ripped from my Twitter timeline. We learned this morning former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's in talks for book contract.

So Twitter being Twitter, there was a flood of possible titles for what actually could turn out to be a pretty good read. "Crime and No Punishment" was one. "Midnight in the Garden of Goldman and Evil." "Saving Giant Privates."

My favorite, from Ben Smith at Politico:

The World According to TARP #geithnerbooktitles

— Ben White (@morningmoneyben) February 6, 2013
Send us yours. Comment below or tweet us @MarketplaceAPM. You can get me at @kairyssdal.

Samsung’s been in the headlines this year, in part, because of its epic clash with Apple. The two have been duking it out for the number one spot in smart phones. 

But despite the fact that Samsung builds the “Galaxy,” one of the world’s most popular smartphones, not a lot is known about the company in Silicon Valley. That’s because most of its brain power -- its research and development -- is based in its homeland Korea.

The comany hopes to change that. It's building a 1.1 milion square foot "R&D Center" and dedicating $100 million to fund emerging technologies. 

"Being in Silicon Valley is really critical because this is the epicenter of disruptive forces," said Young Sohn, the company's chief strategy officer. 

Silicon Valley attracts tech talent from around the world and Sohn says tapping into that, will determine the company’s success.

Mark Cannice, a professor of entrepreneurship and innovation at the University of San Francisco, thinks Samsung is making a smart move by starting a venture capital fund in the Valley. 

"If you think about fashion New York comes to mind, if you think about movies, Hollywood of course and if you think about innovation, you think about Silicon Valley," says Cannice.

He adds that Samsung is making a statement. That despite its varied businesses -- it builds everything from ships to office buildings -- it plans to be a leader in technology.

Wreckage believed to be from the 2011 Japanese tsunami is washing up thousands of miles away in Alaska. The debris isn't just unsightly — it poses environmental worries for the landscape and animals. One conservationist says the problem may be worse than the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

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Wreckage believed to be from the 2011 Japanese tsunami is washing up thousands of miles away in Alaska. The debris isn't just unsightly — it poses environmental worries for the landscape and animals. One conservationist says the problem may be worse than the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

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Owners of 3-D printers can create all sorts of imaginative items — cups, tools, jewelry. All they need is a design and the printer. But now some gun parts are being produced with this technology, alarming some in the burgeoning 3-D printing industry.

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