BTW this was a suggestion first made 100 years ago, to deal with impact of WWI and Spanish Flu knocking out essential services. https://twitter.com/chambart/status/1265252673974132736
Nice survey of who else in the world does postal banking. Spoiler alert: the Swiss!
Also Japan, Germany, China, France, Italy, UK, NZ and that's just a partial Big Economy list https://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/National%20Office/2013/10/Why_Canada_Needs_PostalBanking.pdf
"One of the first acts of the new Dominion of Canada was the creation of postal banking in 1868."

Ultimately lost ground to aggressive lobbying by the banks.

By 1918: P.O. Savings Bank had >$41M in aggregate balance, but banks had >$1.565B, and became increasingly profitable.
Net profits of 11 Canadian banks in 1918: $15M (>$13.7M in 1917) + "dividends were from 8 to 12 per cent, and one at 16 per cent" (Much lower than NY, where bank dividends ran from 16-30% in 1918).

While many people became poor/lost lives during WWI, many companies got rich.
Source for these numbers: The Canadian Annual Review of Public Affairs, Wartime edition. (see picture, been working my way through this to learn how labour issues were handled then)

p.435 for P.O. Savings balances
p.569 for "public deposits" at Banks
p.571 for profits on banks
Postal banking for savings may be better deal, reach more of the currently unbanked; credit unions lower cost borrowing?

The new world of finance has not yet unfolded. Covid19 will reconfigure the balance(s) in more ways than one.
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