Banking 1.0: The Era of Trust and Brick-and-Mortar (Pre-1960s)
For centuries, banking required physical presence. While its roots trace back to 2000 BC Assyria where merchants leveraged grain for loans modern structured banking truly solidified in Renaissance Italy.
By the early 20th century, traditional branch banking dominated the Western world. Banking 1.0 was deeply personal.
The Human Element: Branch managers knew customers by name, family history, and local reputation. Loans were often secured not by complex algorithmic credit scores, but by character assessment and a firm handshake.
The Bottlenecks: This model was highly inefficient. Customers faced rigid operating hours, manual paper record-keeping, and geographic isolation. Fraud was analog, limited mostly to check forgery and internal embezzlement.
