Well it is in France at least. I kind of forget this fact, because not many people use the post office (“La Poste“) for their banking needs. And La Poste is trying to increase their business in this aspect. But why would a post office be a bank? Well I asked this question once to one of my (former) coworkers, who had to find a post office whenever he needed to get lunch money out of the ATM (yes La Poste has ATMs in France). He said that many people live in rural areas where there aren’t any banks and so La Poste took on this role. Ok, that made sense. And after some googling, I found out that it went back to the early 1800’s when La Poste started offering something like a postal money order in the US. Then in the 1900’s they offered accounts to make transferring money easier. So if you think about it, it’s only logical that a post office would offer banking services!
And in January 2006, a company was created to make all this more official (and privatized), La Banque Postale (“The Postal Bank”)!
So today I go to La Poste to mail a package and there’s like 15-20 people in line. Pretty common for a Saturday morning actually. So after waiting about 5 minutes the woman at the front goes to withdrawl money. The man behind the counter hollers out that there are no withdrawls today because the machine is en panne (broken)! This woman wasn’t the only one getting upset, apparently several people in line were there to get their money! She asked “Well how am I supposed to get my money?” “The ATM outside” was the man’s answer. And with that, the number of people in front of me was suddenly reduced by 50%!
So back home at lunch, I asked my wife’s family why La Poste is a bank and who would go there? I got a variety of responses, like “They’ll take anyone, even the homeless”.
I think this postal bank has a big challenge ahead of itself. The idea of waiting in long lines only to be told the machine is broken isn’t going to be attracting customers away from the large, more serious banks in France. However their fees are supposed to be less than the big banks (banks are expensive in France, but that will be another article).
You can see that most of those you use the post as a bank are people with small income. One reason (not the only one and not the main one) is also that la poste gives a free bank card which is quite unusual. It’s free but you can only use the post ATM. But for many people, saving 30 euros for a bankcard per year is important.