AF62 wrote:The branch I mentioned which has no counter at all only machines is an HSBC branch!. It is clear which direction they are going in.
It isn't "clear" yet. There are some pilot branches out there which operate without human tellers. And that may suit some locations and demographics. But I can show you bank branches all over London that are thronged with walk-in customers using human tellers. It could be that the pilot tellerless locations are driving people to use other branches, in which case there will be a limit to how extensive that roll-out will be. It could remain a niche service.
Moreover, as you seem to acknowledge, you need human traffic through a branch to opportunistically sell all the crap products that banks have, like insurance, loans, will-making and so on. I'd never buy such products from a bank but if people like you do, thereby enabling the bank to continue to give me a free human service, then I thank you.
AF62 wrote:As for the cost of an HSBC Premier account being zero, my understanding of the criteria for having such an account was keeping at least £50k with them or having an income of £75k and having bought a mortgage, investment, life insurance or protection product from them. That doesn't sound like a zero cost.
But you are right, there may be a two tier service, with branches and personal service only for those who want to pay through the purchase of products. And this fits with the operation of the counterless branch I mentioned - lots of salespeople for Premier account customers and machines for everyone else.
I qualify on the assets and income criteria, as I suspect many here do. I suppose you could argue that if you leave 50K in a current account earning nothing then you have an opportunity cost. But I don't so it is free for all practical purposes. If HSBC assume that I will profitably buy other stuff and therefore they think it is worth giving me free premier banking, then that's fine with me. But I won't and in fact to their credit HSBC have not harassed me about buying stuff. My "personal" banker did suggest an ISA for me, and when I told him that I worked in fund management in the City for 17 years he promptly shut up, realising that I knew more about investing than he did
AF62 wrote:I don't think it unreasonable for Visa to design its security around 99.9999% of its customers and let the remaining 0.0001% seek an alternative method to buy what they want. Designing your security systems around 0.0001% of your customers doesn't sound a great idea.
I think you know those percentages are wrong. I do not know what the saturation rate for mobile phones and smart phones is, but it would not surprise me if at least 10% of people do not have mobile phones, and 20% to 30% do not have smart phones. Depends on the demographic, but I doubt that banks want to be seen as discriminating against pensioners, immigrants, people on benefits and other classes of people who are less likely to have mobile devices due to reasons of cost, age, disability, ethnicity and so on.
And of course they do not work everywhere nor all the time either.
But when the saturation rate does get to 99.9999%, and reliability is the same, then they may have a point. Until then, they will need an alternative.