I remember as a child/teen in Pakistan first hearing that Bank of America was only in California and Citibank was only in New York. Do even the person visiting us who lived in New Jersey and worked in NYC had two bank accounts. One in New Jersey and one in New York so she could visit branches near home and work.
Bank of America and Citibank had branches in multiple cities and provinces in Pakistan at the time, and in other countries I had visited (UAE, Egypt, Sri Lanka) so this completely blew my mind.
That’s something that I noticed when I was a kid, and we would go to another state for vacations. I would see a lot of familiar signs for fast food places, hotel chains, gas stations, stuff like that. Same ones that we had back home. But the banks would be different, with names that I had never heard of.
I was a weird kid. That’s the kind of thing I found fascinating.
I also ended up as a Bank of America customer due to acquisition. It’s still weird that I have to put in the state where I became a member, because it affects CD rates, fees, etc.
It used to be that some BoA customers had e-banking and others did not, depending on which state they originally joined BoA.
In (I think) 1982, I was with First Interstate, and driving from Idaho to San Francisco, I was dismayed to learn that, while I could make withdrawals, I could not make deposits outside of Idaho.
I has the same experience. My original account was with a Savings and Loan (remember those?), which was received by Sunwest Bank after the S&L debacle, then Nationsbank, then Bank of America. Heck, there may have been another bank in there somewhere, it’s been so long I don’t remember. Original account was opened in northern New Mexico when I was in high school. I never left the state but ended up in southern New Mexico. When I couldn’t transact on my account after Bank of America took over (and IIRC, the account still worked, but there were some types of transactions that the local branch couldn’t perform), they claimed it was because the original account was opened out of state. Obviously not true, but it didn’t matter. I can’t even recall how the matter was ultimately resolved, but I still have a checking account there. I find their online bill paying system works better than other banks I have tried.
Bank of America and Security Pacific were the two big banks in SoCal when I was of an age to be aware of banks. It was really funny that I knew about equal numbers of people who only banked with BofA and hated SP or vice-versa. And each camp had similar horror stories to tell.
Interstate banking in the US grew during the 1980s as states passed laws permitting out-of-state banks to open branches in their state. After some 35 states had done so, Congress passed the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act of 1994, which permitted banks to buy other banks across state lines. Then it was game on.