Italy is the same way and it is awful. We signed up for our bank account at one specific branch of a bank in Padova, Italy, and it's impossible to do much besides withdraw some cash at other branches. It's so dumb.
I've encountered the same thing in Germany, when I log in I use the branch number of where we opened the account? Why? Who gives a shit about that? I certainly don't. But the bank does, for some unfathomable reason.
For each way German banks are better than American ones, it seems like there's a way in which they're backwards or overly conservative.
Side-story: southern Italians who relocated to the industrialising North during the ‘Italian Economic Miracle’ of the 1950s to 1970s referred to the process as ‘emigrating’. Until it was looked down upon by more modern sensitivities, they were referred to as ‘immigrants’, and their offspring referred to as first- and second-generation immigrants.
It really is a rather static society, though now there’s a significant and constant flow of young graduates from the hideously unemployment-afflicted South towards the North, or abroad since the Great Stagnation set in about fifteen years ago.
In the US and Canada, you’ll have a home branch too. Usually it doesn’t come up in anything day-to-day.
State laws for one thing may apply to accounts opened in a particular state.
But if a bank merges or gets acquired, or fails, and some branches get sold/divested, and not necessarily to one party.
One could find themselves a customer of a bank that is no longer local to them.
Here’s a merger that had a divesture:
https://www.bauerfinancial.com/2019/12/09/its-truist-theres-...
I ask because in the UK, each bank branch has a six-digit "sort code", which others will need to know in addition to your account number to transfer you money. However, you can open an account at a branch and never step foot in that branch again afterwards, only ever using other branches. Account numbers are only unique for the same sort code.
This is at Deutsche Bank, by the way, not some podunk obscure bank.
Of course, if you do move and you want to apply for a new credit card, they will mail the card and paper work to any of the locations, so it's not that bad. And all of the banks in the group have an unified online banking system, no branch numbers needed. However, when I switched between the different banks, I had to get new login details for the online bank, which was kinda sucky.
With home-banking these differences are even more marked, some sites have "reasonable" possibilities offered to the customer, some other have next to none (besides checking your account) some have relatively simple workflows some other are so stupidly complex that you give up.
More or less all of them (the sites) have an inane amount of meaningless dashboard/graphics, and very poor tools (as an example to download some data).
However, when it comes to "serious" matters things are seemingly "random" in the way they change from bank to bank, personal anecdata, a few years ago when an old relative died, to access the accounts it took the heirs (with exactly the SAME documentation):
Bank #1: 3 days <- exceptionally fast
Bank #2: 10 days <- I would say "appropriate" or "logical"
Bank #3: 7 months (or 210 days) <- completely "crazy"
And let's not even get into keeping an account in another currency. My bank apparently never had to do anything of the sorts, and after digging for information they told me it would cost about 400€ per year just keep the account open.
As riffraff said, Fineco is one of the very few banks (maybe the only one) that gives the possibility to have foreign currency accounts (linked to a "main" Euro account) at a "reasonable" cost, which is a good thing to have if you deal a lot with the US (both with receiving US dollars and spending in US dollars), but that is not needed for "normal" activities.
The "conto in divisa estera" (that quite a few banks have) is basically aimed to business entities (like firms doing import/export) and is usually rather expensive, or - to be more accurate - has very high fixed costs.
The alternative in the case of someone receiving US dollars may be some form of accounts with credit/debit cards issuers, but - again generally speaking - they - besides offering less possibilities (and not being "properly" a bank) tend to have low fixed costs but higher commissions/fees on single operations.
Investing from the banks themselves it's also possible but it involves higher fees. Using IB has the disadvantage that I have to do the taxes myself.
Ow, come on, you know the saying:
[Italian]
Si dice il peccato e non il peccatore.
[/Italian]
More seriously, as said that is single point anecdata, it is perfectly possible that today a similar test would give completely different results.
And I do understand that things vary. One time, for instance, I even had a package arrive quickly through Poste Italiane.
Err. C&P was universal by 2006ish from memory, but many venues just didn't accept anything other than cash at all. I suspect you are misremembering.
Also from memory, I'd guess 10-12 years as the point when chip&pin was required for _every_ card transaction. Now of course we have moved on to also have contactless.
No one would know what I was talking about unless I referred to it as the "click-clack" machine.
Now I can only think of them using that name.
A former employer uses one for selling excess stock to staff.
I found it very odd when I was in Germany that this wasn't the case, Visa/Mastercard were entirely considered credit cards, and debit cards used some entirely different system. I couldn't use my debit card to pay for a Berlin subway ticket, as the machines only took German bank cards.
Visa Electron was in a different category with Switch Solo. I think they tended to be issued on accounts with no overdraft facility. (I had a Solo card as a teenager and it was only accepted at a handful of places.)
I remember being really annoyed when my
Maestro is pretty common, but there's also something called EC-card or similar. However, the Berlin subway machines now take visa/mc too.
Traditional French banks have a penchant for issuing debit cards with monthly fees and low daily, weekly (!) and monthly (!) limits.
I had a HSBC business account where I had to pay 45EU a month to lift the 300EU per week limitation.
Likewise, French banks refuse to issue chargebacks. The last time I tried, I was told to lodge a police complaint for theft to take the unknown entity who hit my card to .. court ..?
N26 etc have been a breath of fresh air in France.
And most online banks (e.g., Boursorama, Hello Bank, Fortuneo, etc) do not charge you a monthly fee for a card.
In the UK you can write “direct debit” in the minimum payment amount on your credit card application and it will be linked to another account to be payed off in full every month. This will avoid interest charges.
This arrangement allows me to run my credit card accounts for free with no monthly charges.
For us it was just a bank that lacked features and had charges, without a memorable brand.
You just have to choose your bank carefully. Boursorama or Fortuneo are typical decent examples.
So I can see how their model wouldn't be very good, or very disruptive, in places with more consumer-friendly banking options.