Digital gobbles up the business, but banks may not stop adding branches

Acquiring new customers drives growth more than digging deeper into the wallets of existing ones, they say

India’s cashless drive may have taken off after demonetisation but banks have been witness to the digital revolution much earlier. Data shared by banks in their investor presentations shows that branches now have a miniscule share of financial and non-financial retail transactions as mobile and internet banking has taken over. 

For instance, HDFC Bank’s latest investor presentation for the quarter ended March 31, 2018 showed that the bank’s branches only do 8 percent of customer transactions as opposed to 43 percent of the transactions in 2008. This is largely due to the larger share captured by internet banking which