Basic NEM Questions

I’ve just read the Catapult whitepaper. Honestly most of it went over my head so I’m hoping I can try to clarify here what the basic ideas are. It seems NEMs primary purpose is to be a payment system between banks in order to reduce friction. Then regular people can also purchase XEM for purposes of transactions or as an investment. Is this right?

That is Mijin’s primary focus. Mini is a private NEM chain.

That is certainly one of the purposes of XEM.

So if Mijin is a private chain, (blockchain?) how is it not a different currency then XEM?

It surely does use a different token than nem does i.e. not XEM.

Sooo what is that token called? How do banks buy in and out of it?

Any bank can create their own mijin chain. Those private chains will not be connected to each other, and they are mutable, unlike XEM.

If a bank decides to create a token on NEM, that is completely different than using Mijin.