Back in July 2023, I wrote a post about financial remote onboarding which included a section entitled “Three changes in banking over the last fifty years.” The first change I addressed was locational change.
The first crack in the whole idea of “going to the bank” was the ability to bank without entering the door of the bank…and being able to bank on Sunday at midnight if you felt like it. Yes, I’m talking about Automated Teller Machines (ATMs), where the “teller,” instead of being a person, was a bunch of metal and a TV screen.
But when I was recently reading a Bluesky post from mclevin that stated (correctly) that the decline in tellers didn’t start with artificial intelligence, but automated teller machines, it occurred to me that even the once-revolutionary ATM is itself outdated in financial terms.
Think about it.
What are the two most important functions of an ATM?
- To deposit paper checks.
- To obtain physical cash.
I think you see where this is going.
While the ATM still fulfills these functions today, how often do we receive paper checks? And even if we do, why go to a distant ATM to deposit the check when you can often perform the same function using your mobile phone?
And how often do we use cash to pay for things? Often we use a card…or a mobile phone.
Bredemarket 