Bank has no cash
Maybe fewer people are visiting banks in person these days to withdraw or deposit cash, but Arlene Arlow isn’t one of them.
“I like to deal in cold, hard cash. It means something to me,” said the Keremeos woman.
So, imagine Arlow’s surprise when she learned Interior Savings Credit Union was switching her main branch from Okanagan Falls to a new location in Penticton at which tellers don’t handle any cash.
Instead, clients who need paper money are directed to an ATM built into a wall outside of the branch, which opened in June in Peachtree Square.
Arlow, a bookkeeper and former Keremeos town councillor, suggested the new setup is not only inconvenient but could lead to delays in customers obtaining money if holds are placed on cheques deposited through the ATM. That’s not all. “I’m concerned that if we go all the way with technology that when we really want to access our cash — if there’s a run on banks or something — I won’t be able to get my money,” she continued.
Arlow voiced her concerns in a letter to the Interior Savings board and then voted with her feet.
“I went and I got a bank draft and took my money to Valley First,” she said.
Interior Savings spokeswoman Corrine Johnson said the new Penticton branch is the first in the credit union’s stable that doesn’t offer cash services.
“It’s something new that we are trying and it’s a response to changes we’ve been seeing over the years in how members are doing their banking,” said Johnson.
“We’ve seen for years demand for cash services in branches continue to decrease. This probably comes as no surprise, but most members are opting for cashless payments, and for those who do use cash, most are using ATMs because they prefer the speed and convenience of them.”
Johnson said the new setup has been well-received by the “vast majority” of
clients and has freed up tellers, who “can also open accounts, provide financial advice, set up term deposits, credit cards, lines of credit, et cetera.”
While the concept of cashless bank branches may be new in the Okanagan, the transition has been underway in other places for years.
CIBC was the first of Canada’s so-called Big Five banks to go cashless at some of its 1,100 branches, approximately 20% of which are now described as “advice centres.”
“This began in 2015 to meet the changing needs of clients, including demand for financial planning and advice, as well as the increasing use of digital banking (today over 90% of all routine transactions are completed digitally),” CIBC spokesman Tom Wallis said in an email.
Scotiabank spokeswoman Sheena Riveria said in an email “the majority” of her company’s branches remain full service, but didn’t elaborate on how many are cashless.
None of the other Big Five – RBC, TD and BMO — responded to a request for comment.
The switch to cashless branches is more advanced in Europe, according to a 2019 study by the Bank of Canada that found 55% of Swedish bank locations were no longer offering cash services as of 2014 and “similar trends” were emerging in Norway and Denmark.
The study, which examined the issue to help determine how the move to cashless bank might impact demand for paper money, found just a handful of Canadian banks had started “experimenting” with the concept “to align with a decrease in demand for cash services and to reduce cash handling costs.”