I’m going bank management. The truth is that I try not to spend too much time waiting at a branch, or queuing at a box. I have become accustomed (or have been molding), to perform simple steps from home, connected to an old computer. I have settled comfortably in the most basic of levels, without having dared to incur the practices of those young people who put the phone on top of a dataphone and pay for the hamburger.
But, even with that Level Below, below, below, minus, I realize that for months I have not filed a bank office beyond the ATM. But there are times when there is no choice but to put a paper on the physical table of a bank, or bank, that no banker, or banker and sign something in front of him.
Banking, how much does it cost?
I try to concentrate banking efforts in a single day, to get rid of me in the middle of a stroke. In these few months in which I have left them alone, I am amazed that the office no longer exists. The box has disappeared. There is no money there. If you want money, they are kindly accompanying you to ATMs.
You are accommodated before a bar terrace table and you serve yourself a coffee, while you wait for the other tables to clear up. Between sips I glance at a brochure in which I am told that I have just entered a space inspired by me. More technological, but more personal, human, close and transparent. The truth is that if I paid a little attention, it would not be difficult to find out about the procedures that are taking place around me. Absolute transparency
When they finally see me, they explain that they can not do any of the things that had brought me here, because this is a store and they direct me to a physical office, where they can help me properly. Anyway, it will be for another day, because when I go out I can see that I have consumed an hour and a half and a couple of coffee machines.
Coworking space
Let’s see if there is more luck in the next bank. It also remains a bank, but there is no branch either. Five ATMs at my disposal and some wonderful explanations. This is now a thing called coworking space, or work cofee. A lot of tables in which, as I learn, you can work, connect to the internet, make financial transactions, receive advice, hold meetings and attend events.
Good coffee, good treatment and, if you’re lucky, author’s cakes. They can not help me either. If I want, they help me process something online, but physical matters are out of reach. In short, I’m going to the third and last bank that I have programmed, desolate because I do not solve anything, but confident that I can end up solving something this morning.
Now, in my last encounter with the de-virtualized bank, I find a branch with ATMs, human cashiers, small offices, huge queues to be attended and I even feel comforted. When they receive me, the problem is that they can not clarify anything either because, after the recent merger with another bank, the computer system comes down every two times and today one of those two touches.
Fintech, on point
In addition, they warn me that on my next visit, which now seems cozy and even family office, will have become a Fintech that will be part of a smart network, specializing in multichannel care and Financial Technology. Of course, all with a lot of human touch. They give me a brochure that explains it.
I have thrown the morning. I have not solved anything of what I had foreseen. Upon leaving, I meet a young woman I’ve seen working in the branch. He tells me that they have hired him temporarily until the office is restructured and the ERE of thousands of bank workers is finished negotiating.
There is no one who understands anything when even the cathedrals and the modest churches of the religion of money are transformed into coffee shops where you can chat without solving anything in particular. Suddenly a revealing vision assails me: Banking has become a great transitory masquerade to entertain the client until he ends up assimilating that money no longer exists and that his reincarnation rides through the algorithms of the network, on the back of a mobile phone .