Retail Banking and the Internet

Retail Banking is under pressure. Revenues are down due to higher losses, lower lending and decrease in fee income. Bankers are increasingly looking at cost reductions to improve profitability. Internet banking provides some comfort. ATM’s were primarily used to drive customers out of branches as it is more expensive to service them from a branch. Now it’s the turn of Internet. In some countries banks charge differential fees for a particular request. E.g. Stop payment charges are zero over the net, a small amount from an ATM and a nice fee if done from the branch, a form of price discrimination. I haven’t seen this much in UK, does any one of you have such experience ?

Customers have started using most of their transactions on line. It is impossible to remove all the bank branches but it makes we wonder in the near future do we need so many branches. It was a requirement before online banking? does it make sense now ?