Businesses like to come up with all sorts of creative ways to help their bottom line, that 'nickel and dime' their clients or visitors, without, in their opinion, making them squawk too much. I guess you could say their objective is to fleece certain customers lightly enough, that though they might complain, they will ultimately bear it. Checks are a form of payment that businesses and people accept all the time, to which, not every business or person has either the time, their own bank, or the inclination to deposit the check into their own checking account for a lot of reasons, such as their own bank may not credit them the money in a period of time that is acceptable, or they may need to turn that check into cash in order to have ready money, and so forth. You would think that a fair runaround for this particular problem would be to take a given check to the issuer's bank and upon providing valid identification documents, as well as allowing the bank to verify that the client's account that the check is written on is good for the money, that subsequently the subject bank would simply cash the check for you. Banks, for the most part, still do this, but the biggest banks, such as Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo, are charging clients that bring in those checks a fee for doing so, along with mandating two forms of ID, and in some cases, three forms.
All of the above seems inherently unfair for the client, that shouldn't have to pay a fee in order to cash a check drawn upon the subject bank, irrespective of any other factors. While it is true that some banks don't impose the fee if the check is $50 or less, that is probably because they don't want to push the envelope too far, so as to not later suffer from governmental regulations which will take away their ability to charge the fee at all. The banks that charge this fee, like to smile and suggest to the client, that if they would just open an account than they wouldn't charge the fee at all, but virtually no clients going into a bank to cash a check from that bank, go in with the intention of wanting to open up another account, or any account at all, for a lot of reasons, which would include: inconvenience, one more useless account, and time management.
It seems to me, if a bank insists upon all sorts of documentation to prove that you are who you claim to be, and that bank further has determined that there is enough money in the subject account to make good on the check, and have additionally either verified the signature or verified with the check issuer that all is well, than they should make good on the check, and if a fee be charged, than charge it to the client who is the actual issuer of the check, who is their client to begin with and not to the customer who is simply trying to get 100% of what is owed to him, into his hands, in an expeditious manner.
The bottom line is that banks charge these check cashing fees to people that do not have accounts with them, because it is an easy way for them to make money off of people that typically don't have the resources or wherewithal to effectively fight back. The fees are sort of small enough, that many people, will just absorb them as being simply the cost of doing business, which is another reason why banks impose them. It's an easy way for banks in aggregate to make good money upon the shoulders of those that are burdened enough, already.