> The organisation chalked up notable firsts. It was the first bank designed with computerised operations in mind; the first bank in Europe to adopt OCR (optical character recognition) technology; the first bank to offer interest-bearing current accounts, and the first bank in Europe to offer telephone banking, operating several years prior to the start of Midland Bank's First Direct service. It is widely credited for shaking up the UK banking market, forcing competitors to innovate and respond to the needs of the mass market.
It was literally by the socialist government to give cheap and effective banking to the unbanked working class in the 1960s.
Another issue for the US: the EU has an explicit remit for a single market. The US does not, and in some areas it's much less harmonised. Banking is one of them. The US would benefit from a central organisation coordinating things like Faster Payments. Everybody should have the opportunity to do fast, secure, free interbank payments.
More seriously, compare the UK's former state-run consumer bank: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girobank
> The organisation chalked up notable firsts. It was the first bank designed with computerised operations in mind; the first bank in Europe to adopt OCR (optical character recognition) technology; the first bank to offer interest-bearing current accounts, and the first bank in Europe to offer telephone banking, operating several years prior to the start of Midland Bank's First Direct service. It is widely credited for shaking up the UK banking market, forcing competitors to innovate and respond to the needs of the mass market.
It was literally by the socialist government to give cheap and effective banking to the unbanked working class in the 1960s.
Another issue for the US: the EU has an explicit remit for a single market. The US does not, and in some areas it's much less harmonised. Banking is one of them. The US would benefit from a central organisation coordinating things like Faster Payments. Everybody should have the opportunity to do fast, secure, free interbank payments.