Competition
The commercial banks had not been slow to respond to the challenge of competing with the National Giro and had developed their own credit transfer service known as Bank Giro, primarily aimed at the same utilities that the Giro had attracted. It still mainly required a visit to a bank branch and there was no free postage for the remitter.
The banks had also responded to the criticism that they were secretive about their tariffs and for the first time published a standard tariff for personal customers. They also began heavy advertising to the personal banking sector in order to capture the customers that the National Giro had been forced to give up on during the period between the Green Light and the relaunch of Free Banking some seven years later. They had also adopted new services such as credit cards, personal loans and revolving credit accounts which Girobank could not easily do until it had a significant base.
Although the Giro did offer personal loans through a third party, it did not offer many of these main services on its own behalf until after the relaunch in 1978. It added savings accounts, overdrafts, revolving credit accounts, credit and debit cards, and was instrumental in the formation of the LINK ATM consortium of smaller banks and building societies which led the commercial clearing banks to begin linking their own networks which they had hitherto refused to do. It was also quick to establish internet banking and mass market it to its customers. So although the Girobank ended up looking much like any other bank, it was clearly nothing like the type of bank it originally expected to be, but it had also been instrumental in changing the competitive nature of the banking market in the UK and had been a great innovator.
Read more about this topic: Girobank
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