In the UK, covid has made market traders cautious about touching dirty banknotes.
Wireless £ transactions at a card reader work in most shops and are convenient.
You cannot have a card to do that without a bank who own it.

Loan-Banking is a separate question to transaction-banking, and I don't do loans.

Who pays for all that technology to do transaction-banking ?  I'm not at all sure and fear that the next financial crisis might have to pay for it.  In the mean time, if you want the pretence that is costless transaction-banking, and you want unfunded borrowing to pay for the hardware which supports that, then use them whilst you can.  If they start to introduce transaction fees and monthly fees then ditch the bank and move to cryptocurrency.