OneBanks bids to bring human banking back to Scottish town

OneBanks, a UK startup that is working to put fully-staffed banking kiosks in places that high street lenders have left, is gearing up to open its first location in the Scottish town of Denny.

  5 3 comments

OneBanks bids to bring human banking back to Scottish town

Editorial

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While not a bank, OneBanks is promising to provide bank-agnostic in-branch services - such as cash withdrawals, deposits, payments, and face-to-face support - for people and SMEs in communities where traditional bricks and mortar branches have disappeared.

OneBanks is tapping Open Banking for the service and has signed up several tech partners, including Endava, Trust Stamp, Nuapay, NCR and Accenture Business.

The firm's first kiosk will be sited in retailer Co-op's store in Denny, a small town in Scotland that has not had a bank branch since 2018.

The fully staffed kiosk, which has created seven new roles for local people, will have a soft launch this month, with the service going fully live in the New Year, when it will be open from 7am until 10pm Monday to Friday and 9am to 6pm on weekends.

Duncan Cockburn, CEO, OneBanks, says: “It’s so important that residents and businesses have quick and easy access to essential banking services and OneBanks in the Co-op store means that we’re able to provide straightforward banking solutions to ensure financial inclusion for all."

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Comments: (3)

A Finextra member 

But who pays? If it's free in credit banking for the customer and its based on Open Banking, so banks are not paying for their customers to use OneBanks kiosk, I'm not seeing how OneBanks gets any income? Unless banks are going to pay a similar amount of interchange for each (deposit, withdrawal, balance enqiry, etc.) transaction as they do for the post office through its framework agreement then there is no business model. Fully support the concept as it really is needed but others have tried and failed because the banks wouldn't support/pay. Open Banking might enable the transaction and it might be a cheaper 'rail' than LINK or the Post Office but without the banks paying OneBanks for their customers use or the customer paying themselves for the privilege then its OneBanks investor's money that will have to pay ...   

A Finextra member 

I would imagine it is being sponsored by FDATA?

A Finextra member 

The pilot might be being sponsored by FDATA or OneBanks could be funding it from its own investor cashpile. But the point still stands that beyond a pilot (proving it works and providing data on costs and usage/transactions) either the customer will have to pay OneBanks to use the service or the banks will have to pay OneBanks if it's to be more than a funded pilot. 

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