> Every bank is a private company and can choose their customers.
Not really, basic payment accounts are backed by quite a few legislations with pretty strict exceptions (i.e. money laundering or terrorism financing in the EU wide case):
I totally agree with this. Japan is still mostly a cash based society. One of the things I love about it is that I can still rent a car or book a hotel room without a credit card. This keeps people on an even footing. If you are homeless without an address (and therefore a bank account), you can still buy things. If you have poor credit, then you can still pay with cash for anything.
The anonymity of cash is nice, but the lack of discrimination of cash is its real feature.
Nationalized banks with universal service obligations do/did exist. Even for a private bank it's pretty sweet deal though, practically every kid in Australia for the last 50 years got a savings account from ours, even though it was fully privatized 20 years ago many of us still use the same account, they've made some massive profits from that obligation.
Not really, basic payment accounts are backed by quite a few legislations with pretty strict exceptions (i.e. money laundering or terrorism financing in the EU wide case):
EU (since 2014): https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/financial-pr...
Germany (over a century): https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=https:/...