Okay, this explains quite a lot about the state of US banking, and why credit cards are so popular there. In Netherland, almost nobody uses credit cards, because they're less safe and more expensive than our other options. The only reason I've got a credit card at all, is to make international online payments. Even for domestic online payments, we've got a much better system. But internationally, there's nothing. Just credit cards.
I do get the impression that the US should be a great market to start a more modern bank and compete all the crappy old banks away. I'm sure all internationally operating banks have tried this. So why are they not successful?
The US is huge and diverse. Many of our states are larger than many European countries. California's population is about the same as Poland's, New York's is a bit bigger than the Netherlands/about the same as Romania.
But for more than two centuries, the US has, by Constitutional mandate, had one integrated market. Changing banking in the US means changing more than 300 million people, millions of businesses, and thousands of financial institutions with enormous inertia.
There is no way to do that quickly without Congressional intervention. Which brings us to gerrymandered congressional districts and half the country cleaning guns and stockpiling ammunition every time a new law is proposed that isn't to force the religious right's (im)morality on the country, especially when the law might cost anyone other than their political opponents money in the short term, no matter what the long-term benefits are.
There's a reason every minuscule step the US makes toward real health care reform is a big deal, decades after the rest of the western world had already figured it out.
It's mainly a result of the morass of outdated banking regulations in the US.... any "new" bank would have to follow the same rules and would end up with the same problems.
I do get the impression that the US should be a great market to start a more modern bank and compete all the crappy old banks away. I'm sure all internationally operating banks have tried this. So why are they not successful?