 | |
| Company type | Statutory corporation (1968) Public limited company (1988) |
|---|---|
| Industry | Financial services |
| Founded | 1968 |
| Defunct | 2003 |
| Fate | Privatised |
| Successor | Alliance & Leicester |
| Headquarters | Bootle, Merseyside |
| Products | Postal giro, retail banking |
National Girobank was a British public sector financial institution run by the General Post Office that opened for business in October 1968.[1] It was initially called National Giro [2][3] then National Girobank and finally Girobank plc, before being absorbed into Alliance & Leicester in 2003.[4]
It was the first bank in Europe to adopt OCR (optical character recognition) technology;[5] the first bank to offer interest-bearing current accounts,[4] and the first in Europe to offer telephone banking. It is credited for shaking up the UK banking market, forcing competitors to innovate and respond to the needs of the mass market.[citation needed]
- ^ Business and Enterprise Committee (23 June 2009). "Post Offices - Securing their Future: Annex A - The development of the post office network". UK Parliament. Retrieved 13 April 2014.
{{cite web}}:|author=has generic name (help) - ^ Post Office (Giro System). Parliamentary Debates (Hansard) (Report). Vol. 673. 4 March 1963. pp. 165–74. Retrieved 25 June 2016.
- ^ National Giro Service. Parliamentary Debates (Hansard) (Report). Vol. 770. 17 October 1968. p. 163.
- ^ a b Collinson, Patrick (7 July 2003). "Girobank brand laid to rest after 25 years". The Guardian.
- ^ Glyn Davies with foreword by James Callaghan (1973). National Giro: modern money transfer. London: Allen and Unwin. ISBN 0-04-332054-6.