Donna Corrigan pops into her local supermarket to pay OneBanks a visit, laden with a heavy box of coins to deposit into her bank account.
After the closure of its last bank branch in 2018, the Scottish town of Denny has welcomed a hi-tech startup offering everyday banking services inside the town’s Co-op grocery store.
Looking onto shelves filled with Heinz baked beans and Kinder Surprise chocolate eggs, OneBanks’ kiosk — comprising staffed counter services, a cash machine and two computer tablets — opened in late 2020.
The kiosk offers Denny’s 8,000 inhabitants an alternative to traditional bank branches after the rise of online banking allowed lenders battered by the global financial crisis more than a decade ago to save costs by permanently closing outlets.
Among Britain’s biggest banks, HSBC and Lloyds last month said they would close a further 129 branches combined as customers increasingly switched to online banking during the pandemic.
British consumer group Which? predicts about 5,000 UK bank branches, around half the total, will have disappeared between 2015 and 2022, with Scotland worst affected.
Swathes of Britain’s population remain dependent on cash, despite the surging popularity of both internet use and contactless payments during the coronavirus pandemic.
The Royal Society of Arts charity estimates almost 20 percent of Britons — particularly the elderly and those in rural areas — would find it hard to cope without cash. Yet in Denny’s neighbouring town of Bridge of Allan, there is not a branch in sight.
The last bank “closed about four years ago”, said hardware store manager Jennifer Wilson. A lot of our customers prefer to pay in cash to keep an eye on what they’re spending,” she added.
Source: eNCA
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