Not very much, no... we call it ’campanilismo’: the tendency for people to live out their lives within earshot of their town’s church’s bell-tower (campanile).

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.

> 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.

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-...

Other than having to enter the branch number, are there are other restrictions based on where you opened the account in Germany?

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.

It's not even a thing "in Germany". There may be some banks that do this, but I would say most don't. But then, most banks are relatively regional, so while you can use any branch of the bank, there won't be any branches of your bank if you travel far enough--and if you are with your local Sparkasse, for example, then that is your bank, the Sparkasse in the next bigger city over has nothing to do with them (well, yeah, they have, but they most definitely are a separate bank).

Yeah, my wife wanted to open a separate account for her new job, and they said she'd have to go visit the original branch.

This is at Deutsche Bank, by the way, not some podunk obscure bank.

In Finland, the biggest bank is actually just a group of local banks. So if I sign up for a bank account up north, I am the customer of the bank way up there, which is a separate legal entity from the bank down in the south.

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.