> Australia has 4ish banks. The US has 4000. It’s just not the same problem Your right in thinking the situation is different between the USA and Australia, bu

> Australia has 4ish banks. The US has 4000. It’s just not the same problem Your right in thinking the situation is different between the USA and Australia, but the different isn't 4ish vs 4,000 (it's really 100ish vs 4,000). The immediate reason is that Australia solves these problems from the top down. We've done it over and over in banking. Credit cards were pushed down decades ago (ergo, we haven't needed cheques in that long), then EFTPOS with Chip&Pin (no signature) was pushed down, plus a list of other things. The latest thing (in the last few years) is the Reserve bank of Australia's new payments platform: https://www.rba.gov.au/payments-and-infrastructure/new-payments-platform/ https://www.rba.gov.au/payments-and-infrastructure/new-payme.... Osko is a instantaneous bank transfer system for us retail plebs that is built on top of it. Meanwhile the USA hasn't pulled this off once. If you look deeper at Australia, you will see it isn't just banking. There was a recent headline here about engineered stone being banned. Wiping out an industry was Australias solution to it killing too many tradesmen in their 30's. In general strong federal level laws aimed at creating efficient markets is something the Australian system does, and it's something Australia's seem very comfortable with. The USA on the other hand is just hopeless at it, and the USA voting public phobia's about "big government" boil to the surface every time they try. An example of something the rest of the world pulled on that the USA can't: metric. And without that sort of leadership from the top you have no hope of corralling a herd of banks so they move in the same direction.