When Shiva Rajbhandari arrived at UNC-Chapel Hill three years ago, he quickly ran into a problem.
He needed somewhere to deposit the thousands of dollars awarded to him as part of his Morehead-Cain scholarship, but the credit union where he’d banked growing up in Idaho wouldn’t accept a transfer that large through its app. He considered opening an account with a bank in Chapel Hill, but he was passionate about climate activism and had pledged to avoid using banks that invest in fossil fuels—including banks close to the UNC-CH campus like Wells Fargo. And he wasn’t eligible to join the State Employees’ Credit Union, which generally requires its members to be state employees or related to one.
“I did not have a banking option besides these big banks,” Rajbhandari told The Assembly…