> That's because you need Royal Assent in order to be a bank in Canada. Unlike the US that has hundreds (if not thousands) of banks, Canada only has 5 (or is it 6 now?) massive banks.
This isn't really accurate, in that creating a bank nowadays requires only conformation to The Bank Act, not any royal (or by-proxy Governor General) consent. There are 44 domestic or domestic-subsidiary-of-foreign-corporation Schedule 1 banks in Canada, and 600+ credit unions. The big 5 dominate, but more for historical reasons than anything else.
The long prevalence of things like chip-and-pin and email money transfers and other modern amenities that are just starting to show up in the US has more to do with a marked preference for standardization governed by industry consortiums like Interac in Canada, rather than multiple competing, incompatible credit networks that debit piggybacks on top of, I suspect.
Most credit unions in Quebec are part of the Desjardins group. They don't seem especially widespread outside of Quebec.
Quickly glancing at the ownership of 9 of the 10 largest credit unions outside of Quebec, 8 of the 9 were unrelated to Desjardins. The 4th largest (Meridian Credit of Ontario) was the sole exception. I couldn't find info on the 9th largest, Cambrian Credit of Manitoba.
This isn't really accurate, in that creating a bank nowadays requires only conformation to The Bank Act, not any royal (or by-proxy Governor General) consent. There are 44 domestic or domestic-subsidiary-of-foreign-corporation Schedule 1 banks in Canada, and 600+ credit unions. The big 5 dominate, but more for historical reasons than anything else.
The long prevalence of things like chip-and-pin and email money transfers and other modern amenities that are just starting to show up in the US has more to do with a marked preference for standardization governed by industry consortiums like Interac in Canada, rather than multiple competing, incompatible credit networks that debit piggybacks on top of, I suspect.