Elanor's Guide to the Disc
 
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Banks of the Disc

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Having a bank account is crucial, because carrying huge amounts of cash around can be heavy work, and PK's are likely to lose it quite fast. Not to mention the irrepressible Ilik (an NPC thief who ignores all his guild rules and will steal several hundred dollars at a time). There is also the possibility of losing your corpse and needing ready funds to replace the lost items.
In addition: wages from the newspapers and Tarnach's are paid directly into your bank account, and housing rental fees are taken directly out. Through the use of a bank with branches in more than one town means that one may be assured a steady supply of coin in the local currency without the need to pay the hefty rates of a money changer.

 

Basic Information
There are two types of bank available: Those owned by players and coded banks which are generally referred to as npc banks.
Those owned by players are in fact a player shop with a bank counter.
There can only be one master counter for any specific player bank, however, franchise counters may be purchased in four different sizes. The franchise counter allows one to set up a branch office of the main bank in another shop and, crucially, in another city.
It is important to remember that the owner of the master counter will not have any control at all over the franchise counters.

Player banks tend to have lower deposit charges than npc banks, but this is offset by the lower reliability.
The difficulty with franchise counters is that they only have a limited capacity. If there is an excess of withdrawals then the bank may not have enough ready funds to meet demand and if there is an excess of deposits the counter will become full and no more deposits will be possible until it is emptied.
The problem truly lies not in the need for someone to maintain the counter, although obviously this is important.
Rather it is the fact that the coins must be changed into the currency of the main bank to transfer them, which means the shop owner must pay a money changer. To charge more than the changer charges will not win many customers, but too charge less means taking a loss when emptying the changer, so many franchise counters fall into neglect.
Your funds are safe of course, regardless of full or empty franchises, but remember that the cheaper rates come with the risk of closed branches.

The other rather crucial consideration with player banks is that if for any reason the owner decides to trash the master bank counter, a worrying possibility with the new lease system, then your money while safely saved will not be accessable until a new master bank counter is installed in the same location.
A special law has been introduced in Ankh-Morpork to protect its citizens from this terrible calamity.
Namely the owner must give 3 disc months (one real month) warning before trashing the counter, in as many forms as possible.
This includes board posts, newspapers, town cryers and the talker.
But it can happen.
 
 
Corporate and government banks.
 
 
Player banks.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The initial groundwork of the information available on banks was provided in the article Cheques and Balances by Unslidge in the fourty-second edition of the newspaper Ankh-Morpork Daily.