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A comment on Why it's taking so long for Americans to get payments instantly. Parent comment

Re:Why it's taking so long for Americans to get payments ins... by pmontra on Sunday December 17, 2023 @01:57AM (#38670937)
According to the Bank of Italy there were 439 banks in Italy in 2022 down from 684 in 2013. [1]

GDP of USA and Italy: 26.95 and 2.19 trillion dollars. [2]

GDP/banks (if it makes any sense but bear with me) : 26.95/9000 = 0.0029 and 2.19/439 = 0.0049

So yes, money per bank is less in the USA but only by a factor of 2. It's in the same order of magnitude. It's also a much larger and sparse country (at least in some areas) so I would expect more fragmentation and redundancies in those markets where you need to be physically close to customers. Banking is among them IMHO

[1] https://www.bancaditalia.it/pubblicazioni/banche-istfin/2023...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...

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Re:Why it's taking so long for Americans to get payments ins... by kelnos on Sunday December 17, 2023 @02:20AM (#38671007)
I don't think GDP is a reasonable proxy for value of bank deposits.
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Re:Why it's taking so long for Americans to get payments ins... by mb5 on Sunday December 17, 2023 @02:27AM (#38671033)
It isn’t, but I don’t think the parent comment is trying to use it like that - they’re going for “how many banks are needed to support an economy”. Otherwise deposits per bank or perhaps assets (loans etc) per bank would be much better choices.
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