| As an American who's living in Israel let me tell you that the backwardness of the US banking system doesn't even begin to COMPARE to the sheer inconvenience of banking here. * No chip and PIN. Yep, same here. * You have to interact with your branch for EVERYTHING. EVERYTHING. Not your bank. Your branch. * The banking websites are all uniformly atrocious. Every single one looks like they designed it back in 2002 and just stopped and said, "meh, this is good enough." * You pay for everything. Want to withdraw money from an ATM - your bank's ATM! - 1.76 ILS. You want to withdraw cash from a teller? 10 ILS. You wrote a check? 1.80 ILS. You thought about the bank on your way to work? 2.40 ILS. * Checks can not be stopped. In fact it is illegal to issue a stop-payment on a check. * The bank scrutinizes EVERY CHECK YOU WRITE. If the signature doesn't match the signature they have on file -- even a little bit because you were in a rush -- they reject the check. Oh, yeah, and they examine it by hand, not by machine. Oh and when they reject your check for technical reasons? 9 ILS. * Direct debit... ok, actually, they've got this one covered. It's super easy. Except you still have to fill out a form that authorizes said payee to debit your account. * You pay a monthly fee to the bank for the privilege of banking there. Not all banks have a monthly fee necessarily, but they all have surcharges so it all amounts to the same thing at the end of the day. Oh gosh, don't even get me started on just how awful and inefficient the system is here. It is ripe for disruption except that the government has pretty strict controls around everything that goes on in the banking sector. |
Free banking is not as ubiquitous in the UK as it used to be, especially as rules regarding using admin charges (for letter sending and such) as a revenue source are getting tighter.
A number of banks are planning to drop their free options in some instances. FirstDirect, to name one, already have: their standard (and only) current account is free if you pass at least a grand per month through the account or maintain an average balance of a grand, otherwise it costs £10/month (they word it the positive way around: the is always a £10/month fee, but if you pay enough in or otherwise keep a good balance they "waive" the fee) - so it is free for many but far from all (if you are on, or close to, the statutory minimum wage your wages won't be enough after tax/NI even if you work full time (assuming full time is between 35 and 40 hours per week).
One thing that still gets me is how long it takes for payments to get from some accounts to some others. Over the last couple of years "faster payments" has become common so between most current accounts payments take less than an hour (sometimes less than a minute) to show up at the destination, but it still takes three working days for money to get from my current account to my credit card account despite the fact that the two accounts are held at the same bank.