Here is a fascinating article on Wired about the declining influence and relevance of fractional reserve commercial banks on the lives of individuals. It argues that banks will one day look more like Google, Facebook, or Apple.
Interesting about this is that during hyperinflations when banks essentially collapse due to not having balance sheets built on sound and real assets, the major industrial companies begin to take on the role of commercial banking, extending loans off an asset base that rises along with prices.
For more on this and how banks evolve during hyperinflation, see Adam Fergusson’s book “When Money Dies”, and Constantino-Bresciani Turroni’s “The Economics of Inflation”.
