Re: Wake up Banks
There's two problems with that plan:
1. Paying in cheques. If they're not paid into a branch of the receiving bank they have to be sent to one. In the UK the Post Office can be used for many simple bank related things (cash in/out and cheques in, in most cases) - cash is easy as that can be done via a debit (ATM) card and POs tend to be set up for cash handling anyway so it almost becomes a shared branch. Cheques get put in the post and can take 10+ days to clear. Banks are working on a way to do this via a photo taken by their banking app but it's not widely available yet (and assumes possession of a smart phone with decent data coverage in such rural areas).
2. Large quantities of cash.
Shops tend to be geared up for mostly receiving cash and handing out stuff in exchange. Disrupt either the balance between the two or reverse that flow in any significant way and the shop ends up paying more to handle the cash. It can work to the shop's advantage - e.g. cashback when paying with a Debit card means they reduce the amount of cash in the registers at the end of the day but a smaller rural shop could run out of cash if there are a lot of cashback requests. Another issue: shops usually like to bank their takings on a regular basis (cash is a target for criminals) and that requires a bank which is set up with the security and processes to handle large amounts of cash.
In short it may help out a few rural people who need to deposit their birthday money or get a tenner out but isn't a practical replacement for a bank branch with respect to cash handling.