 | |
| 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.
- ^ 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.