Thursday 7th June 1962

The banking institution Credit Suisse–then known as Schweizerische Kreditanstalt (SKA)–opened Switzerland’s first drive-through bank in downtown Zurich. Like many developments in automotive culture–including drive-through restaurants and drive-in movies–drive-through banking has its origins in the United States. Some sources say that Hillcrest State Bank opened the first drive-through bank in Dallas, in 1938; others claim the honour belongs to the Exchange National Bank of Chicago in 1946. Regardless of when exactly it began, the trend didn’t reach its height until the 1956-1965 period. Around that time, California-based Wells Fargo Bank introduced the “TV Auto Banker Service,” where an image of the teller was broadcast to the customer in their car on a special closed-circuit television. Deposits, withdrawals and other transactions were completed using an underground pneumatic tube that whisked money and paperwork between the car and the teller station. The SKA branch that opened in Zurich in June 1962 featured eight glass pavilions, seven outfitted for left-hand drive cars and one for vehicles with right-hand drive (such as those used in the United Kingdom and Ireland). The drive-through was well received by the press, and in its first year of operation, the bank handled around 20,000 customers. By the1970s, however, the automobile’s popularity had led to a major traffic problem in downtown Zurich, and fewer and fewer drivers opted to stop to do their banking from their cars. After years without a profit, SKA closed the drive-through in 1983. In the United States, by contrast, drive-through banking never lost its popularity. Nearly all major banks nationwide offer some type of drive-through option, from regular teller service to 24-hour automated teller machines (ATMs). In recent years, drive-through banking reached the previously untapped Asian market: Citibank opened China’s first drive-through ATM at the Upper East Side Central Plaza in Beijing in August 2007.