The Joke's on Bank Branches, Says Movenbank's Brett King

Sorry, Movenbank customers, you won't be able to find wheatgrass juice at your local branches anytime soon.

In an April Fools Day blog post on Finextra.com, Movenbank founder Brett King detailed what initially appeared to be a major change in strategy. The branchless, mobile bank had decided to open storefronts after all, "in response to the strong demand for us to compete with the main street branch players," King wrote.

To quench customers' thirst, the bank would offer "blended organic wheatgrass bars where you can mix fresh fruit and vegetables with our 100% organic, whole leaf wheatgrass," the faux announcement adds.

The joke poked fun at traditional banks, which have increasingly tried to lure customers to their branches with coffee, yoga classes and other untraditional perks.

Located in New York's Central Park, Movenbank's fictional branch would feature yoga mats that "incorporate the ability to plug in the soon-to-be-released NFC-enabled iPhone 5 for listening to your playlist, while synced to specifically designed Movenbank visualizations that appear on the digital walls all around you," King said in the blog post.

"We've enabled an intelligent neural net that combines the different playlists of different customers to create a virtual living art form within our space as participation grows," he added.

The branch, which would be known as "the space," would eschew such antiquated offerings as cash and bank tellers, according to King.

"Clearly cash is a menace to society, and our branches are making a clear statement that the good of mankind would be best served by having no cash at all," King was quoted as saying in the fictional press release.

King later added a comment to the blog entry on Monday morning, clarifying that announcement was a fake.

"We thought it opportune to poke fun at ourselves and the industry," he said in the comment.