Thursday, May 05, 2005
Get used to the new banking world and the cashless society
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
Get used to the new banking world and the cash-less society
There’s this revolution in banking going on, right here in River City, as we speak. The old marble columned banks, built to impress depositors with their solidity, have turned into cultural centers, or restaurants or theatres, right before our eyes. The institutions themselves, with tellers’ cages, Lexan partitions and money bags armed with red paint sprayers to foil bank robbers, have turned into simple low-security storefronts, and the banking functions have gone upstairs, leaving the teller functions to sometimes cashless associates, and/or to ATM machines accessible 24 hours a day, holidays notwithstanding. It is an environment that would totally frustrate Willie Sutton, who robbed the aforementioned institutions by the dozen, “because that’s where the money is. “ It ain’t, not necessarily. Some of these bank tellers actually don’t have any money to disperse, they give the clients chits with account information, to be played into giant money machines, super ATMs. Bank managers can no longer be freely kidnapped and held captive while the robber comes with the hijacked password and keys and opens the vault – the boss of the branch may not have the authority over nor the combination of his own treasury. How does a simple bank robber hold up a machine that is non-responsive to threats, emits instant squawks to a central office and prompts the practically simultaneous arrival of guards bristling with guns? Career changes seem induicated.
The bank robbers’ loss is the customers’ gain. Banks have become more accessible and less expensive to use. There is a new breed of player in town, Washington Mutual, North Fork, Wachovia, Bank of America and Commerce, that are giving the willies to our staid institutions, Chase, Citigroup, and such. You are beginning to get offers from the old warhorses, of no charge-no minimum balance checking accounts, easy credit and similar service inducements. But the upstarts continue to grow, North Fork from 75 to 138 branches in two years, BOA from 4 to 65, Commerce from 6 to 38, while Chase is down from 216 to 213 and Citigroup from 140 to 137 branches, reports the NY Post.
Visiting a branch of Washington Mutual on Broadway south of 14th Street, housed in a converted antiques store, one finds a busy ATM up front and a banking office with a four or five standalone posts, like the high desks of Norman Rockwell’s green-eyeshaded bookkeepers, with computers on top and a filing cabinet below, manned by young fellows in golf shirts, who wave customers over, enter their transactions in the computers and issue chits, to be collected from a common cash machine. The clerks stand up all day, so it seems, moving from post to post. Service announcements cover the walls, pamphlets are offering retirement and investment strategies, college savings plans and credit cards. No vestiges of the reserved atmosphere an old-fashioned bank used to exude are noted, it is an all retail environment. There are desks in thee back, for sit-down banking transactions, but the old dignified “carpet” areas are transformed.
A lot of this ties in with the cash-less world that is moving in on us. Not just ATMs, think of how many of our fellow shoppers at the Associated, the Food Emporium and the Met use debit and credit cards to pay for routine minor purchases, annoying the impatient. Debit cards are getting to be accepted in discount groceries, such as Aldi’s upstate and in Pennsylvania, and the major chains (Food Emporium, locally) are trying to eliminate the checkout clerks, a big expense despite their low wages. Token- and toll-booth clerks are getting to be a thing of the past, all subway riders use Metro cards, and maybe one in 40 passengers on the 1st Avenue bus still uses cash (I’ve counted, more then once). All toll road, tunnel and bridge authorities, country-wide, are installing smart cards, allowing the cars to pass through, non-stop .If technology cuts out progressively more and more of labor costs, particularly of people who spend their paychecks, and sends the good jobs offshore, who’s going to buy the goods? Miraculously, America still produces, although imports are estimated to be up to 17% of the GDP.
Speaking of smart cards and e-cash, some foreign countries are well ahead of us. In Hong Kong their Metro card equivalents were inadequate because of the multiplicity of transportation systems and vendors, and Sony came up with the Octopus card, containing a tiny computer CPU and a transmitter, which can be waved in front of sensor, no physical contact necessary to either re-load it with cash from a bank account or pay for the trips and goods. In Finland, the great mobile phone country, that instrument can be used for payment of public transportation.
The world of stocks and bonds has also changed. Those of us who make limited use of stockbrokers’ services, by phone or internet, may not be acquainted with the 24/7 international trading environment that the staid New York Stock Exchange has just jumped into, by acquiring (or surrendering itself to) Archipelago, the 3rd largest (after NASDAQ and Instinet) on-line trading system. Customers are supposed to be the winners, benefiting from competitive prices, and eliminating some of the illegal shenanigans certain stock brokers have been convicted of, such as shoving their own orders ahead of client purchases, thus benefiting from the lower prices.
More of the impending stock market transformation later.Wally Dobelis thanks Monica McCollum and the Post, and Gartner Group
Get used to the new banking world and the cash-less society
There’s this revolution in banking going on, right here in River City, as we speak. The old marble columned banks, built to impress depositors with their solidity, have turned into cultural centers, or restaurants or theatres, right before our eyes. The institutions themselves, with tellers’ cages, Lexan partitions and money bags armed with red paint sprayers to foil bank robbers, have turned into simple low-security storefronts, and the banking functions have gone upstairs, leaving the teller functions to sometimes cashless associates, and/or to ATM machines accessible 24 hours a day, holidays notwithstanding. It is an environment that would totally frustrate Willie Sutton, who robbed the aforementioned institutions by the dozen, “because that’s where the money is. “ It ain’t, not necessarily. Some of these bank tellers actually don’t have any money to disperse, they give the clients chits with account information, to be played into giant money machines, super ATMs. Bank managers can no longer be freely kidnapped and held captive while the robber comes with the hijacked password and keys and opens the vault – the boss of the branch may not have the authority over nor the combination of his own treasury. How does a simple bank robber hold up a machine that is non-responsive to threats, emits instant squawks to a central office and prompts the practically simultaneous arrival of guards bristling with guns? Career changes seem induicated.
The bank robbers’ loss is the customers’ gain. Banks have become more accessible and less expensive to use. There is a new breed of player in town, Washington Mutual, North Fork, Wachovia, Bank of America and Commerce, that are giving the willies to our staid institutions, Chase, Citigroup, and such. You are beginning to get offers from the old warhorses, of no charge-no minimum balance checking accounts, easy credit and similar service inducements. But the upstarts continue to grow, North Fork from 75 to 138 branches in two years, BOA from 4 to 65, Commerce from 6 to 38, while Chase is down from 216 to 213 and Citigroup from 140 to 137 branches, reports the NY Post.
Visiting a branch of Washington Mutual on Broadway south of 14th Street, housed in a converted antiques store, one finds a busy ATM up front and a banking office with a four or five standalone posts, like the high desks of Norman Rockwell’s green-eyeshaded bookkeepers, with computers on top and a filing cabinet below, manned by young fellows in golf shirts, who wave customers over, enter their transactions in the computers and issue chits, to be collected from a common cash machine. The clerks stand up all day, so it seems, moving from post to post. Service announcements cover the walls, pamphlets are offering retirement and investment strategies, college savings plans and credit cards. No vestiges of the reserved atmosphere an old-fashioned bank used to exude are noted, it is an all retail environment. There are desks in thee back, for sit-down banking transactions, but the old dignified “carpet” areas are transformed.
A lot of this ties in with the cash-less world that is moving in on us. Not just ATMs, think of how many of our fellow shoppers at the Associated, the Food Emporium and the Met use debit and credit cards to pay for routine minor purchases, annoying the impatient. Debit cards are getting to be accepted in discount groceries, such as Aldi’s upstate and in Pennsylvania, and the major chains (Food Emporium, locally) are trying to eliminate the checkout clerks, a big expense despite their low wages. Token- and toll-booth clerks are getting to be a thing of the past, all subway riders use Metro cards, and maybe one in 40 passengers on the 1st Avenue bus still uses cash (I’ve counted, more then once). All toll road, tunnel and bridge authorities, country-wide, are installing smart cards, allowing the cars to pass through, non-stop .If technology cuts out progressively more and more of labor costs, particularly of people who spend their paychecks, and sends the good jobs offshore, who’s going to buy the goods? Miraculously, America still produces, although imports are estimated to be up to 17% of the GDP.
Speaking of smart cards and e-cash, some foreign countries are well ahead of us. In Hong Kong their Metro card equivalents were inadequate because of the multiplicity of transportation systems and vendors, and Sony came up with the Octopus card, containing a tiny computer CPU and a transmitter, which can be waved in front of sensor, no physical contact necessary to either re-load it with cash from a bank account or pay for the trips and goods. In Finland, the great mobile phone country, that instrument can be used for payment of public transportation.
The world of stocks and bonds has also changed. Those of us who make limited use of stockbrokers’ services, by phone or internet, may not be acquainted with the 24/7 international trading environment that the staid New York Stock Exchange has just jumped into, by acquiring (or surrendering itself to) Archipelago, the 3rd largest (after NASDAQ and Instinet) on-line trading system. Customers are supposed to be the winners, benefiting from competitive prices, and eliminating some of the illegal shenanigans certain stock brokers have been convicted of, such as shoving their own orders ahead of client purchases, thus benefiting from the lower prices.
More of the impending stock market transformation later.Wally Dobelis thanks Monica McCollum and the Post, and Gartner Group
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 5:00 AM 
