top of page

A new leaf for the bank branch

Published by Banking Dive, July 2021

In 1997 a Canadian bank opened a café. That same year, a fledgling American online bookstore held an IPO and implicitly made its position clear on brick-and-mortar bookstores and their cafés.

​

Times were changing. But they were changing differently in different sectors. A bookstore with a café seemed passé; a bank with a café seemed pioneering. Retailers were being transformed by technology while bank branches were unaffected.

​

Almost a quarter century later, technology caught up with banking. Bank branches and retailers now find themselves on a similar page.

​

Where cafés persist, they are neither passé nor pioneering. They are just appropriate complements to in-person experiences as brick-and-mortar asserts its role in an increasingly online world. The challenge is how to define exactly what that in-person experience should entail.

​

To an extent, bank branches can follow retailers with their experiential stores that bridge inventory-light showrooms offline with immersive commerce online. But the sectors are different, and simple emulation will not suffice.

​

Read on

© 2024 by Chris Button

bottom of page