In the Britain of the 1960s, bank accounts were only for the top 20 percent. The working class were usually paid weekly in cash, but that left junior salarymen having to endorse their paychecks, often to the milkman, to get their money. A new Labour government knew there must be a better way, and kindly thought to use the established infastructure of the post offices to make it happen. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
The design of this stamp did not age well. The organization was just getting going in 1968 so one can understand the stylized emblem as a way to signal future promise rather than current reality. However now over 50 years have passed, emblems have come and gone and eventually the whole thing was privatized. I came at this stamp thinking they were talking about some sort of radar technology.
Todays stamp is issue A220, a 5 pence stamp issued by Great Britain on October 1st, 1969. It was a three stamp issue in various denominations showing off new technology at the post office. According to the Scott Catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used or unused.
In 1959 the government came out with a white paper that challenged that the banking industry was not serving the money needs of the bulk of the country. This confirmed what the Labour side of politics always suspected. The banking industry itself admitted that small accounts were unprofitable and at the time many smaller towns did not have bank branches making it hard for the middle class to access their pay. Many were really endorsing over they monthly paycheck to the milkman. Many other countries offered basic banking services through their post offices, which usually even the smallest village had. A new post office bank started from scratch could also use computers to automate processing and base more transactions off payer initiated wire transfer instead of payee based check cashing or depositing. The term giro was an old term for a wire transfer. The post offices would also benefit. They were already used to hand out welfare/dole payments and dealt in vast quantities of cash. Private banks were charging the post office high fees to do this and a National Giro Bank operated through post offices could take this function over.
The National Giro got up and running in 1968. A lot of money had to be spent to be ready to open nationally and the bank of course started with much infrastructure and no customers. The first few years saw the operation generated large losses due from the government owners. In 1970, the then new Tory Heath government proposed labeling it a Wilson failure and shutting it down. They instead settled on a reorganization plan to lower losses.
Eventually National Giro was handling one in three wire transfers and was the sixth largest bank in Britain when ranked by deposits. It was the the first bank in Britain to offer an interest earning checking accounts. The bank also had a large stigma. The post offices remember handed out dole payments and GiroCheques became slang for handouts to lay abouts. There was also the problems that checks written by regular account holders resembled dole checks more than a check drawn on a private bank,
In 1989 the system was privatized and sold off to Alliance & Leicester, a mutually owned building society, similar to the old American Savings and Loan. The privatization included a contract that allowed it to keep working through post offices which it did until 2003. Alliance & Leicester was absorbed by the Spanish bank Santander Group in 2010. In 2013 the British post office relaunched some of the old money services under the Post Office Money brand.
Well my drink is empty and while Money will be more popular then Gyro their emblem seems lacking. Strange since current operations seem to spend ever more time on branding instead of doing. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting, written by some rando who brands himself The-Philatelist.