Comment by xorcist
5 days ago
"Let you hold my money"? In what society is that true? Banks run our financial infrastructure, and you can't just opt out of them. If you want to have a salary, do your taxes, or raise children you will need a bank. They have an immense amount of power and operate in a heavily regulated area so there's guaranteed to be very little competition.
Voting with your wallet does not work here. There is only a handful of banks, and in many (most?) countries they all force proprietary software and/or unreasonable contracts on their customers, switching between them does not help.
> Banks run our financial infrastructure, and you can't just opt out of them. If you want to have a salary, do your taxes, or raise children you will need a bank.
After getting screwed around by my bank (ASB) I am looking to get away from them. Wise is tempting. They are not a bank.
My salary can go to them. Why would I need a bank for taxes or my children?
The only thing holding me back is the fact that money isn’t government guaranteed as secure with them. With ASB NZ$100k is government guaranteed.
Google tells me there are about 4.3k FDIC insured banks that operate in the US.
At what number would you consider this to be more than "very little competition"?
I have lived in several European countries but not in the US. Maybe it is different there. The only clue in the post was HSBC, which is a British bank. This is why discussing this is so hard.
The European Union has tried to create a pan-European banking market for a long time without success. Banks are still a national business, even if banks themselves operate internationally you always do business with their local prescence. In theory you could keep your accounts in another country, in practice that is a massive headache.