Siemens, a big German conglomerate has just applied for a banking licence. Before I quote an article or press release, just google Siemens and banking licence you will find a bunch of articles from all major German newspapers, reuters, etc...

General Electric - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

GE's divisions include GE Capital, GE Energy, GE Technology Infrastructure, NBC Universal and GE Home & Business Solutions

Through these businesses, GE participates in a wide variety of markets including the generation, transmission and distribution of electricity (e.g. nuclear, gas and solar), lighting, industrial automation, medical imaging equipment, motors, railway locomotives, aircraft jet engines, and aviation services. It co-owns NBC Universal with Vivendi. Through GE Commercial Finance, GE Consumer Finance, GE Equipment Services, and GE Insurance it offers a range of financial services as well. It has a presence in over 100 countries. GE gauges to control a railway locomotive^[21]

Since over half of GE's revenue is derived from financial services, it is arguably a financial company with a manufacturing arm. It is also one of the largest lenders in countries other than the United States, such as Japan. Even though the first wave of conglomerates (such as ITT Corporation, Ling-Temco-Vought, Tenneco, etc.) fell by the wayside by the mid-1980s, in the late 1990s, another wave (consisting of Westinghouse, Tyco, and others) tried and failed to emulate GE's success.

Siemens, Europe's biggest engineering company, said it had applied for the licence to German financial regulator Bafin, which is now reviewing the application.

"With the help of a licensed credit institution Siemens aims to expand the product portfolio of its financial services unit, particularly in the sales finance area, add flexibility to group financing and optimise its risk management," the company said in a statement.

The financial services unit normally provides financing to customers buying Siemens' products.

licence lite^TM in place to "only" have a central bank account but no right to engage in lending???

I think the biggest barrier to entry is not capital but regulatory compliance.

Basically, I think you would have to run a business for a few years which would not be a "bank" and after accumulating a number of operational records for maybe 5 years you could become a "bank".

The easiest way to start a new bank is to buy a failing one, possbly.

In the US, Walmart were looking to get into banking big time, and in the UK the Tesco Bank is likewise gearing up. In Africa and elsewhere, where banking systems are rudimentary at best, Telecom companies are getting into mobile payments by either buying banks or partnering with them in one way or another.

There will be no banking system as we know it in the developing world, and they will leapfrog straight past us.

Banking in its current form is dead on its feet, being terminally starved of capital. The logic of the internet is for a transition to service provision, and this has the attraction of this for banks is that the only capital they would require is that necessary to cover operating costs.

Note that there is a fundamental difference between the requirement for clearing of the credit based upon the capacity of individuals and enterprises to provide goods and services  - which does not require deposits - and credit secured against completed property or productive assets, which does.

I believe that the end game is Peer to Peer Finance. During the transition to this architecture there may be other transitional architectures - but nothing based upon deficit (and credit intermediation) will in the long term be sustainable.

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson