Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doesn't need to be a bank. You go to a shopfront FX dealer in Vientiane or Tehran or St Petersburg and deposit or withdraw USD against local currency (or anything else that's liquid). In the most basic trades, possession is settlement. Much of the third world has significant trade in USD, including countries that the US doesn't regard well. In Panama, the USD is a defacto national currency, a choice the crowd has arr…
If you do a transaction with physical cash, yes you don't need a bank. But if you do any large transaction it will not be in physical cash, and the clearing has to go through a US approved bank. Foreign banks that cannot clear USD use other banks behind the scene.
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