My main use of retail banking is for transactions. Having a bank account means that my employer can pay money into it, i can use a card to withdraw cash from it

My main use of retail banking is for transactions. Having a bank account means that my employer can pay money into it, i can use a card to withdraw cash from it, or make payments from it, i can authorise direct debits against it, and i can use a web interface to make transfers and review my transactions. When i have money to save, or i need to borrow, i don't go to my bank. I go to whoever gives me the best rate. I'd be interested to know what fraction of bank customers are like me. For the features i use, the web interface is probably fairly easy, but all the rest involves integrations with payment networks, which are not entirely trivial [1]. Money may all be digital, but as anyone who has ever worked with computers knows, that doesn't mean it's easy. So for me, the purpose of a retail bank is mostly to provide reliable implementations of a bunch of API clients. [1] although i led a team which build a large chunk of a system for making transfers, and if i can do it it can't be that hard