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jacquesmyesterday at 11:30 PM1 replyview on HN

Nice try, but no. When I was working for a US bank in the 80's, well before smartphone and even well before mobile phones the plan was hatched to reduce the number of offices because those offices were horrendously expensive. The big cost was the tellers and the handling of cash. For mortgages and other big ticket items there was a profit, but everything involved in the handling of money was a really large cost.

So they decided to reduce the number of offices. The ATMs were very specifically placed in the same location where the closed offices were, often renting just a fraction of the former space (usually a small cubbyhole attached to an outer wall). From 140 branches over a really small area they went to a small fraction of that, and ATMs took up the slack. Many people even preferred dealing with the ATMs rather than with the tellers because the ATMs were (at least initially) open 24x7.

Bank offices have all but disappeared. I think there are still two regional centers here and that's it. All deposits and all withdrawals of cash - as long as we still have cash - is handled by the ATMs. The iPhone came decades later.


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metalcrowtoday at 1:59 AM

How do you explain the data contradicting this? I believe that your bank did this but the data seems to show otherwise.

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