The Chinese banking system does this. With regards to not losing money on underperforming loans, the government just prints up money and bails out the banks for all their mistakes. To keep moral hazard from getting out of hand, financial fraud or even rule breaking is punished severely with the worst frauds leading to executions and the banks are micromanaged to the point of being partially privatized central planning.
It's worth noting that printing money and giving it to the banks is effectively the same as taxing cash - it causes inflation and reduces the value of Yuan-denominated assets (though there are ways to manage this).
By doing this, the Chinese government is subsidizing entities that borrow from the bank (which are often SOEs) without directly taxing its citizens.
Also worth noting that China prints money to keep the Yuan low and then charges high interest rates to keep the cash from the markets and keep salaries low.
The big Chinese banks (BOC, ICBC, ...) are all SOEs, so they are basically owned by the government. Interest rates on deposits are paltry (even by western standards), and the banks make all their retail money on shadow banking products. What really kills the banks, however, is the loans they are forced to give out to other SOEs.
Most people just need to be able to use their money electronically. When the business model of banking is to have everyone give you all their money, then loan out 90% of it, it doesn't seem like such a difficult task. The reality is that it is difficult to start a new bank.
That’s not actually how banks work at all. The amount a bank can lend isn’t at all linked to the amount of deposits it has - banks lever capital, not deposits. And they can lend more than 10x that - I think with the recent Basel III rules it’s 12.5x tier 1 capital, but back around the GFC when there was less regulation some banks were 30x. (The US does have a reserve requirement too but most countries don’t. There’s no real need when you have a central bank as a lender of last resort).
To satisfy double-entry accounting rules, banks actually create deposits from loans, not the other way around. Deposits do help with liquidity for fulfilling interbank transfers (and rules now have liquidity requirements that deposits count towards), but as long as they are not insolvent the bank can also just borrow the reserves it needs from other banks or the central bank.
No problem, I expect most people don't know this. Don't worry though - even some economics textbooks contain those kind of loanable-funds / money multiplier models that don't really describe the real-world workings of banks!
I guess it's a holdover from classical economic theory - banks did work more like that a century ago when that kind of economics was being worked out (pre-WWI gold-standard days) but the modern economy is different!
I don't need a physical location, but would like a place I can sent a check to. Just an ATM? Forget the fancy office no-one goes in anymore? Oh yea, technological security would be appreciated. Never understood why they don't sent an email everytime I use a debt card?
I don't care about the loan because they will never give me one. I get it. This is America. The place where the poor get one chance, usually a high interest credit card.
(This is what most America's want. Most of us are barely getting by, and I believe banks have colluded on fees. And they are still redlining. Loans--well it's so much more than good credit, and pay stubs. It's basically dad signing away the family house in order for most of us to get a decent loan, and some of us would never take that risk.)
We want it to be ubiquitous.
We want it to be close to free for retail customers.
We want it to not lose money on underperforming loans.
We want it to extend the social benefits of credit in the community, even if the community is very poor.
We want it to be very closely regulated, so that people never lose their money.
We want opening a bank to cost less than the net present value of all future banking revenue in American Samoa.
It’s really rough satisfying all these wants at the same time.