I've always wondered what exactly banks DO see as a competitive advantage. If I want to take my money somewhere, what's the single-slide pitch for why should I choose Chase or Bank of America versus a regional/local competitor?

It's not pricing. As a consumer, it always seemed like the largest banks tended to be relatively non-aggressive on their rates. Isn't "we have economies of scale and pass the savings to you" the classic competitive play?

It's barely, if at all, public facing apps/websites. Okay, you've all got a branded app, you've all started offering Zelle, and you all let me take a photo of the (average of) five paper cheques I recieve in a year to deposit them.

It feels like for a while it was the vague promise of "we've got the largest network so you don't need to worry about finding a machine." A concern largely mooted by smaller banks refunding out-of-network fees and credit union networks.

A depositor is not the customer banks are chasing. It's the businesses who want loans and financial services like M&A and IPOs.

Their competitive advantage is not in their software at all. It's in their relationships. The software helps them scale to large numbers of depositors. That's all.