But than the apps you download (your banking app) require play services right?

So then what's the point of having a Play Store without Google Play services?

GrapheneOS managed to make Google play services into normal android services, without higher privileges that they have on other android systems.

I am personally more than okay with using the official, proprietary GP services from time to time if they abide by the same rules, especially that I can make these rules as strict as I want.

Not all apps on play store require play services.

And even if you install Google play on your graphene phone, it is still more isolated by default. Add that to the concept of storage scopes and more permissions control (apps have to ask for access to the network) and you have a more secure platform.

Many apps claim to require Play Services, but all my (several) bank apps work perfectly on GrapheneOS. No notifications because they rely on Google, but that is more feature than bug in my books.

Signal brings its own notifications, so they work perfectly.

The only app which was broken to the point of unusability was Too Good To Go, which demands that you pick locations on a map which relies on Play Services; the manual city entry is broken.

I use Google Maps only in Firefox Focus, but I've heard that builds of Google Maps up to about a year or so ago didn't rely on Play Services, and with Aurora Store you can manually enter a build number to install.

tl;dr: 10/10, fabulous experience.