First, compared to the rest of the EU, Germany is a weird outlier with the number of banks they have (which, by the way, has been declining steadily for 15 years).
Setting that aside, you missed the "deregulated" part.
As I understand it (and I grant my understanding is pretty cursory) Germany has a much stronger central regulating body, and is subject to overall EU regulations as well.
The US has multiple regional banking authorities and a ton of responsibility is delegated to the states, and in general government intervention is seen as a last resort.
And also, a lot of german banks are actually federated with centralized IT departments (like Finanz Informatik) providing the entire bank as "blueprint". Yes, even if they aren't called Volksbank or Sparkasse. For instance, if you get an EC/GiroCard from DKB, the letter is suspiciously typeset in Sparkasse's corporate font.
> First, compared to the rest of the EU, Germany is a weird outlier with the number of banks they have (which, by the way, has been declining steadily for 15 years).
Still, the absolute number itself seems to be not really the issue here. (I assume the number of US banks has similarly declined in the US, as fusions reduce cost.)
> Setting that aside, you missed the "deregulated" part.
If Germany is anything like the Scandinavian countries, those banks will just be branches of a handful of different banks.
We really don't have any microbanks that need to roll out their own tech for everything - most are just part of the larger banks, and get all the infrastructure provided for them.
