On the trust of the institutions part, this is sadly true, there's a lot of baggage.
In this day and age I think that ship has sailed, in that it's hell to try to live without a smart phone and online payment. Missing a payment because they needed to go pay cash on friday evening and couldn't make it, phoning around to find on duty doctor on a saturday night etc. are things that will become more and more of a hurdle as vulnerable people make the move to the more beneficial online equivalents.
Too many critical things are already impractical to deal with the old ways.
Some EU countries force banks to provide minimum service to anyone with a valid identity.
The good part is these accounts have no checking service nor overdraft possibility (any action is done in real time towards the actual account balance, there's no payment coming it two days after the fact with no money to clear it, and anything that bounced is just unpaid, with no additional punishment on the bank side). The bad part is the service provided is really minimal and online banking will often not be included, and at best will be an extra fee depending on the bank.
In this day and age I think that ship has sailed, in that it's hell to try to live without a smart phone and online payment. Missing a payment because they needed to go pay cash on friday evening and couldn't make it, phoning around to find on duty doctor on a saturday night etc. are things that will become more and more of a hurdle as vulnerable people make the move to the more beneficial online equivalents.
Too many critical things are already impractical to deal with the old ways.
Some EU countries force banks to provide minimum service to anyone with a valid identity. The good part is these accounts have no checking service nor overdraft possibility (any action is done in real time towards the actual account balance, there's no payment coming it two days after the fact with no money to clear it, and anything that bounced is just unpaid, with no additional punishment on the bank side). The bad part is the service provided is really minimal and online banking will often not be included, and at best will be an extra fee depending on the bank.