Banks have closed at a steady rate for fifteen years.
Most moved to an application, and the cost difference is enormous.
A branch visit costs a bank several dollars; an application transfer costs a fraction of one cent.
The savings are real and the losses are unevenly distributed.
Older customers and small businesses use far more than anyone else.
A shop that takes cash must it somewhere, and a weekly trip of twenty kilometres changes the business.
When the last branch in a town closes, cash use falls and so does the local trade that depends on it.
Several countries now require a bank to fund an alternative before closing.
Shared banking , where several banks use one on different days, are the common answer.
Post offices perform the same role where the network still exists.
Neither restores everything a branch did, and both keep cash .
Regulators have been slow because the closures looked like a private commercial decision.
They are, and they also remove a piece of shared infrastructure that nobody else provides.