Not sure about the others, but by law no bank can have more than 10% of the national deposit asset, which makes it very difficult to be a monopoly. That's why the recent rumor of the merge of Wells Fargo and Goldman is just nonsense.
So there are fairly strong regulations on what other things a bank can do. I can't remember exactly what it entails. It's possible Amazon could get around that with holding company structure or something, but I'm not sure.
I agree with your general point though, maybe just not the bank part.
Edit1: It's not reg W, damn I cannot remember which section describes this. There's too many bank regs in the US.
Bank or bank holding can't own anything other than other fin, ag, or family stuff.
I'm still at sure to what extent this would stop Amazon from starting their own bank. (IANAL, but this was explained to me years ago by an expert on us federal banking regulation so I have hazy memories of it)
Aaaand I just wasted 15 minutes of my morning looking through the CFR on banking regulation, time to stop reading hackernews.
That's because US regulatory regime is antiquated. Deposit insurance is a pain, payments take ages and some very old cheque rules still apply to transfers.
As much as these companies would like to be something separate, they are precluded by laws and regulations.
Wells Fargo is yet another example of big bank that a long time ago should have been disallowed from buying any more banks. Local banks don't get away with shady stuff like this because you can go visit a banker in person. There is no such thing as a "local" Wells Fargo. It has the same customer service and anonymity as an internet forum.
What happens when a smaller bank that isn't a member of this chain tries to do business with the network? Do these smaller banks lose-out competitively by not being a member? Who is the governing body approving access - the competition?
The question is, why are they un or under banked? What or who creates those conditions? One doesn't see much diversity in or competition in banking products or terms, so it's not likely that anything is going to change.
Because federal regulators said so over 10 years ago. They don't accept deposits as defined by FDIC, engage in fractional reserve banking, or otherwise meet the definitions of a bank in the US. They're more like an escrow service, holding funds on your behalf in accounts at actual banks. They are a money transmitting entity, which means obtaining 54 state/territory licenses to operate in the entire US, and they hold all of those.
> Goldman, which has zero retail banking experience.
Goldman runs Marcus, an online only HYSA. The interest rates for that and for Apple Savings (which they also run) are close, but not the same. It's weird.
JPMorgan is actually prohibited from buying other banks in general due to their size. The FDIC gave them an exemption in the process of soliciting bids for First Republic over the weekend and maybe last week.
Yes they can do that. But that's not what the parent comment asserts. With respect to Banks and governments, they're different in that they have a monopoly over their jurisdiction.
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