Case studies in select large cities have found that fringe services, including payday lenders, check cashers, pawn brokers, and money transmittal companies are more geographically accessible to predominantly minority neighborhoods while traditional banks are more accessible to white neighborhoods. However, many analyses are bivariate rather than multivariate and do not disentangle the influence of neighborhood socioeconomic status from that of race. Furthermore, the fringe services industry contends that market factors, such as zoning, arterials, population base, and commercial activity influence location. This study employs geographic information systems (GIS) and multiple regression to untangle the spatial relationship between minority communities and traditional and fringe banks in four small-to-moderate-sized metropolitan areas. We find that, though market factors are indeed powerful determinants of fringe bank location, there are nonetheless persistent ethnic effects in two of the four cities and these effects cannot be attributed to factors correlated with a large minority presence.Since the mid-nineties, the U.S. financial service sector has become increasingly bifurcated into a two-tiered system: the traditional banking system serves primarily middle-and upperincome households, while lower-income households may use banks only sporadically or not at all for essential financial transactions like writing and cashing checks, obtaining credit, and wiring money. Instead, many low-and moderate-income individuals rely on alternative financial service providers, including payday lenders, check cashers, pawn brokers, and money transmittal companies for basic financial services and transactions. These "fringe banks" often charge high fees and, when used for short-term credit, may contribute to spiraling debt. Individuals and households without bank accounts are more vulnerable to theft, have no mechanism in place to facilitate saving, do not earn interest on any money saved, and are unable to establish credit worthiness, thus impairing their ability to improve their financial fortunes over the long term.Racial and ethnic minorities are disproportionate users of fringe banks, thus exacerbating the inequity of a bifurcated financial system and regressive fee structure. Case studies in select large cities have found that fringe services are more geographically accessible to predominantly minority neighborhoods while traditional banks are more accessible to white neighborhoods 2010 UAA Annual Meeting Paper Direct correspondence to: Rachel Garshick Kleit, Daniel J