Almost everything about banking has been changing over the past decade or so, and Covid has propelled changes to a stratosphere we are not likely to return from.
Young people will be amused to learn that decades ago banks were only open for the public to access their money from 10am to 2pm five days a week, giving rise to the colloquial reference to “banker’s hours.”
Today 30% of consumers still walk into a bank to conduct transactions, and 22% go three times in a month, but why?
Earlier this month Invisibly’s Realtime Research asked people about their banking habits these days, and found 40% of folks do their banking online or through mobile banking. Older folks may remember how the innovation of ATMs and debit cards set the world afire and changed everything in the 1980’s and 90’s; younger folks wonder what the acronym ATM stands for. Invisibly’s neurologist Dr. Don Vaughn says there is no doubt about it, we’re transitioning to a cashless world. “We are absolutely heading in a cashless direction. 52% of America, the majority, never or extremely rarely draw money from an ATM,” he tells KTRH News.
Mind you, there’s still a bank branch on every street corner, and people do still go to banks. “There’s still a large number of people who still prefer to go o physical banks. When it comes to money, people want want a little longer to be in a safe physical realm rather than having nowhere to go to complain and ask where their money went.”
The hours are more generous than banks of generations past, and it’s still better to go into a bank than have to deal with computerized phone tree systems with a complaint - and not be able to reach a human.
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