Will customers wait in line to bank online?
That’s what some banks are hoping as they install Internet kiosks at branches alongside teller windows and automated teller machines.
Branch employees have been using online stations for years, though primarily as educational tools to demonstrate the ease and advantages of banking over the Internet. But this latest generation of Web stations is not designed to show people how to use the Internet; these machines let people do their primary banking online.
Several years after banks introduced what was initially called home banking, it is becoming clear that many customers have become accustomed to banking online. They have now made it a part of their money management habits, whether they are in front of their home computer or not.
Though they are less functional in some respects than ATMs — most notably, they do not dispense cash — these Web kiosks also offer some functions that neither an ATM nor a teller can offer, such as helping customers pay their bills.
And Michele Barlow, the manager of environmental communications at Bank of America Corp., says that more customers are starting to use the kiosks for their daily banking. “They’re walking over to the online banking stations with a stack of bills, and they are doing their online bill pay” in the branch.
FleetBoston Financial Corp., which the Charlotte company bought this year, built the first of what it called Investment Access Centers in September 2001. The central feature of these specialized branches are online kiosks; the centers also have ATMs, though they are kept to the side.
There are now 80 kiosks at 46 branches in the Northeast, and Ms. Barlow said that each receives 2,000 to 2,500 customer visits per month.
And the traffic patterns at each site reflect both the habits of the local community and the broad range of services offered online, Ms. Barlow said. The oldest one, in Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal, is frequently used by commuters to look up their transaction records and download stock quotes to study on the train ride home, she said.
The two kiosks at B of A branches in Harlem are typically used by people who do not have Internet access at home or work, she said; they typically visit at the start and end of the workday, or during lunch.
And the sites in suburban Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania get a lot of traffic from parents who come in on Saturdays, often with children in tow, to pay their bills online.
Ms. Barlow said the in-branch kiosks offer the same features that customers can access from home, along with additional security features. Customers log on by swiping their ATM cards, and pressure-sensitive floor panels automatically terminate a session when the customer steps away from the machine.
Other banks are also discovering that customers want to bank online from various locations. PNC Financial Services Group Inc., for example, has installed kiosks on six college campuses.
Student customers, “as you might have guessed, are our most electronic customers,” said Bonnie Wikert, a PNC vice president.
B of A kiosks are also being used heavily by students. Ms. Barlow said the kiosks at the Harvard Square branch in Cambridge, Mass., have “been a really popular feature for our college students.” Kiosks are also being built into 24-hour ATM vestibule sections of some branches.
And Ms. Wikert said PNC is considering installing kiosks “in a corporate campus, like a hospital.”
Anjalee C. Davis, an analyst for the Boston market research firm Celent Communications LLC, said in-branch online banking stations are becoming more popular “among the banks that are looking to expand or add branches in urban areas, where they can target the most affluent and technology-savvy.”
Citizens Banking Corp., a $7.7 billion-asset bank in Flint, Mich., is designing its new branches to include an online kiosk in a prominent location. However, Tom Shafer, Citizens’ regional president for southeast Michigan, said the machine is primarily for educational purposes. “It’s really a client trainer,” he said.
Though Mr. Shafer said customers could use the kiosk for online banking, he considers it primarily a promotional tool. “The Internet banking is the first thing you see when you walk into the branch. We want it to be highly visible.”
In this respect, Citizens is following a strategy that many banks have used for years. George Tubin, a senior analyst at TowerGroup Inc., the Needham, Mass., research unit of MasterCard International, said the introduction of online banking at branches mirrors the early days of the ATM.
“When ATMs first came out, people in the branch would walk up to customers in line and say, ‘Have you tried the ATM?’ ” he said.
Online kiosks could help banks handle more customers, and promoting the kiosks in the same way ATMs once were could persuade more people to try online banking, either at home or at the branch, Mr. Tubin said. Online kiosks are “good for the branch, because you’re not tying up their resources” by having tellers produce things like statements.
