Wells is notoriously crooked. Bank of America was a primary player in structuring withdrawls to maximize overdraft fines on their customers.
Chase has its own problems, but it would add a lot of inconvenience to your life to eliminate it.
Those three big players have purchased the majority of other banks in the country, leaving a scattered few credit unions and smaller banks around, which will be extra inconvenient when you travel and they absolutely will not offer the same range of credit cards with good rewards programs.
You don't need to touch Wells, Chase, or BoA to have financial infra in the US, although you might be stuck with them if you have a mortgage, auto loan, or other lending they originated or service. My condolences in that case.
[1] https://www.fidelity.com/cash-management/fidelity-cash-manag...
[2] https://www.schwab.com/checking
[3] https://thepointsguy.com/guide/amex-membership-rewards-vs-ch...
[4] https://www.mycreditunion.gov/about-credit-unions/credit-uni...
It is slightly less convenient, but much better for the country.
Examples:
* it's 2020 and my credit union doesn't have autopay for my credit card.
* someone stole my cards and made some unauthorized charges at an unattended parking lot -- they did it almost 40 times in a single day across 3 cards that I rotated between. Chase and Amex took a 5 minute phone call each. My credit union took more than ten hours of work to get my money back, including demanding that I go to a -- remember, unattended -- parking lot that was near a job I hadn't worked at in 6 months to try to get a refund.
The real answer is if you qualify for eg a chase sapphire reserve, you get excellent service and an excellent product.
A lot of credit unions are members of the CO-OP program, which gives you access to more ATMs than any of the big banks (possibly more than all of the combined). At least for travel within the US, being part of that CO-OP credit union is much more convenient than BoA and their ilk.
I just checked: 50 BoA ATMs within 20 miles of me. Over 100 within the CO-OP network. This is in a decent sized metro area.
I just checked my small undergrad town: 3 in the city, and 2 in the adjacent city. BoA has only 1 - and only in the adjacent city.
In my experience, it's always been able to find a Co-Op ATM than a BoA one.
Others complained about poor services, web sites, etc. I suppose that can be true, but it isn't for mine. In fact, I had to ditch one of the national banks because it couldn't provide simple features that my local credit union does - stuff like limiting which of my checking accounts is tied to my ATM card - without limiting it in their online site. So if I tied my ATM card to only one account, then when I logged in to the account's site, it would not let me transfer money between the accounts that are not on the ATM (although it would let me view transactions, etc).
I've also used my debit card in other countries. It worked just like any other card would (I did have to inform them in advance so it wouldn't trip up fraud detection).
> and they absolutely will not offer the same range of credit cards with good rewards programs.
You do not need to have a bank account with Chase and other companies to get good credit cards with rewards programs.
The reward program through the credit union is not that great, but I'm okay with that.
Your comment would imply a huge gap between this top tier of 3 banks and the rest of FDIC banking; there are quite a large number of large banking institutions available which are not as small as you've positioned them. https://www.mx.com/moneysummit/biggest-banks-by-asset-size-u...
(there are similarly very large Credit Unions such as NavyFederal with lots of asset: https://www.mx.com/moneysummit/biggest-us-credit-unions-by-a... )
FWIW, Citigroup is almost as big as Wells Fargo.
You're probably thinking of employer-paid business travel, passing on "air miles" to an employer. It's 2020, my friend.
