All banks in Brazil now use the Google Play Integrity api. I've been on rooted phones for almost 15 years, and I'll never not main a rooted phone. But for a couple years now, I have to keep a separate phone just to be able to use tha f*cking banks.

And they'll gladly close it, them and every other bank. We lack alternatives so we lack leverage.

In many European countries this means you cannot have a online-activated bank account. Offline banking is paid and often expensive.

Samsung is not in control of this. Play services is a quite broad framework that is fully in control of Google, and the foundation for many services and applications on the device (including Play Store itself).

If you would factory-reset your device right now, it would reset to the version of Play Services that came with the installed device firmware, but upon startup the services framework would likely fetch information that it is outdated and won't continue until you have upgraded it.

In this state you could probably use your device and sideload apps, but none of the Google Mobile Services (Play Store, Gmail, Maps, YouTube,...) and 3rd party apps which require Google APIs will work

such as? Curious, because on iOS you can freely install browser extensions (adblockers like uBlock origin lite) from the get go. Still boggles my mind that Chrome does not allow extensions.

Like what? I am curious what’s left

If there's a cheap Chinese phone that banks/google accept, that might be my second (non-rooted) phone.