Europeans slow to adopt online banking

Research shows most people still use branches

Despite moves to encourage customers to use ATMs and the Internet for transactional banking, 48 per cent of Europeans still visit a branch for routine transactions at least once a month according to analyst Forrester.

Despite banks' efforts to move low-value and routine transactions to self-service channels, 130 million Europeans still visit branches each month – branches remain the second most popular service method in Europe after ATMs.

Low-income, older customers are most likely to visit a bank branch. Other banking channels like the Internet and phone serve only 63 million and 19 million consumers, respectively.

In the seven markets covered in Forrester’s survey only Sweden and the Netherlands had moved the majority of transactions to the Internet with about half of their population banking online and less than a fifth visiting branches each month.

Although branches remain dominant, the frequency of visits is not increasing. The number of branch visitors has fallen in most countries since 2001 as consumers turn to new banking channels.

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