The "self-banking" service model introduced by ING Bank on the market in mid 2004 and received with suspicion by the competition at the time is now being adopted by other banks, as well. BRD is preparing to launch specialised locations bearing the "24h BRD" logo, while Raiffeisen has already opened two offices using the same concept, though only experimental at the moment. The first "Cafe Bank" that BCR is going to open on the location of the former beer house Turist in Piata Romana will include banking machines, which will allow conducting operations without the intervention of a bank employee. The same service model was introduced by ABN Amro this autumn, though this particular bank is not seen as an operator on the retail market yet.
Purely symbolic, Citibank introduced the first "intelligent" machines a few years back that allowed payment of bills with cash, but the programme was not expanded.
Therefore even though the major retail banks keep saying the needs of the customers require the presence of an employee to provide advice, the viability of the business model that entails expansion of the standard operations programme to 24 hours is gaining acknowledgement.
Actually, this service category is widespread on the Western markets, and Central Europe also, as an addition to the traditional business hours.
It is mainly about the possibility offered to customers to no longer be tied to a relatively tight schedule for making simple operations such as feeding cash into accounts, paying bills, transferring money from one account to another or viewing card transaction history over a specific period of time.
Such operations cannot be performed at most of the traditional cash dispensers and the machines facilitating them have to be placed in secure locations, unlike ATMs, which most of the times are very exposed. The first to import the model on the domestic market was ING Bank.
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