RBS Chief: Free Bank Accounts Won’t Exist In The Future, Become a Thing of the Past

Royal Bank of Scotland’s chief executive Ross McEwan recently said that he thinks that people will soon have to start paying for their bank accounts. In his opinion, the public has no idea about the level of service that goes into the banking industry.

Regarding this, he said:

“There's 50,000 ATMs across the UK and they are free to use, other than some of the private equity firms are starting to put a charge. But all the bank ones are free to use, so it doesn't matter if it's our ATM or somebody else's you can use them free of charge. We pick up the fee for that of about 25p on behalf of customers. Customers don't pay anything for these accounts. They don't pay anything for a cheque. They don't pay anything for an ATM. They don't pay anything for actually coming into a branch. They don't pay for the contact centers.”

This is where Bitcoin comes in.

The offshore banking industry, which is dominated by influential financial institutions like JPMorgan, is structured around large banks that are able to clear big sums of money in an efficient and secure manner. But, the transfer of millions to billions of dollars require significant manual labor including transaction verification, Anti-Money Laundering (AML) checks and payment clearing.

Cryptocurrency is trying to be the offshore banking system. Most of the financial luminaries don’t understand what it’s trying to be. Regarding transaction settlement, offshore banking, and financial freedom, centralized systems of banks fall significantly behind major cryptocurrencies, which can offer all three services with low costs and a robust infrastructure.

It makes sense that with the growing popularity of Bitcoin as a mean of payment the question of the banking institutions’ relevance has risen. Basically, your Bitcoin wallet is a bank. If that’s not enough, fintech companies began to contribute to the financial evolution by eliminating brick and mortar offices and paying their customers.