...at first blush, I like this line of thinking, but I wonder what the side effects would be. If banks make it much harder to open accounts, that might hurt poorer folks the most, and perpetuate inequality.
Being poor is incredibly expensive and exhausting.
That argument would only make sense in the U.S.
But I believe there are also lots of well-intentioned but bad regulations, and so they need to be considered carefully!
I don't think I accept that premise.
My argument is that the party that can actually do something about the fraud is the one that should feel the pain of dealing with it.
It's likely possible to quantify the effects, regulators could do that and strike a sensible balance between security requirements and so on.
It may harm the rich the most, in my opinion, since retailers wouldn’t as easily be able to trick you into a new credit card as part of the checkout process.
Poor people are more often in less stable living situations and it's easier to lose track of documentation. Not to mention unhoused people who don't have a safe place to keep track of things either and often don't have up to date identification in the first place. Also, with less access to the internet to do things remotely it's more common to need to take time off work to go to a physical branch which may be very far away, requiring taking multiple busses just to prove their identity.
Of course adding more security is important, but it has tradeoffs like this that harm the poor that need to be considered.