Have you noticed your bank has closed branches? Have you noticed that they are making it difficult to transact in cash? Have you noticed that your current branch will not allow you to transact at your branch and you need to travel to the head branch? Do you have elderly family that might be confused at new rules and do not understand what is required? NOW is the time to remove or close accounts that you feel might not be providing the service you expect. This is not restricted to small regional branches - it’s happening across the banking sector…….worldwide.
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There are no bank branches in my town. When I moved here, there were at least four branches - so yes I nooticed the closure of branches very much.
I have since taken steps to put more transactions through a Building Society (which is similar to a credit union) that is at least 'locally' owned. My big issue was international banks, which I believe to be more exposed to international crashes. However, because there are no branches in my town, I need to use a card to buy stuff. So, the next step is to start using a debit or eftpos card (not credit) from that building society, rather than the existing cards I have right now, which are remnants from previous arrangements.
I did hold the opinion that having a few banks to my name would reduce exposure, but in the end, they all boil down to Visa/Mastercard anyway. So there's that.
The other thing is payment systems like Paypal. Our business was doing well with that, because we could export easily to pretty much anywhere in the world. However, they decided that we had not shipped something when we had, and took $500 US dollars away from us and returned it to the lucky buyer - who got his money returned AND the product. This is when we stopped using the system, and it subsequently crashed our export business. NVM, we have changed what we are doing now - I can't be bothered with exports now. Paypal is just too overbearing and authoritarian. They insisted that every shipment had to be tracked, but this was a new policy at the time, which we were not aware of - hence the return. Tracked goods, although normal now, were three times the shipping fee.
We have looked at bitcoin as an alternative, but I am leary of it, despite listening to Max Keiser on the subject. It just seems to be like gambling to me.