Lloyds Bank to Shutter 48 Offices

Britain-based Lloyds Banking Group will shutter 48 bank branches in England and Wales, according to a Wednesday (Oct. 20) report from Reuters.  

The financial services group focused on retail and commercial customers serves millions of customers in the United Kingdom, according to its website.  

The impending branch closures come on the heels of a June announcement that Lloyds Bank would shutter 44 other branches, according to Reuters.  

See also: Lloyds Bank Teams With Visa To Offer Straight-Through Processing For Commercial Clients 

Wednesday’s announcement follows an August PYMNTS report about Lloyds Bank partnering with Visa to provide customers in Europe who use the lender’s corporate credit cards with straight-through processing (STP) technology. That effort, coupled with the branch closures, seems to underline Lloyds Bank’s focus on bolstering technology and a willingness to cut costs by reducing the number of physical branches. 

STP provides buyers with the convenience to time their payments and is part of a series of recent payment advances aimed at supporting corporate clients. 

Last year, Lloyds launched Swift gpi Instant, which connects cross-border payments rails to real-time domestic infrastructure, to simplify the cross-border payments process. In 2019, Lloyds debuted its payables application programming interface (API), which lets businesses send quicker, contact-free payments. The bank processes more than $487 million in payments each month through its API, according to PYMNTS. 

Related: Lloyds Plans To Buy Embark Group for $542M

In July, Lloyds, with the $542 million acquisition of Embark Group, made a bigger play for the investment and retirement sector, according to PYMNTS. As part of the deal, which is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year, Lloyds will gain approximately $48.6 billion in managed assets held by more than 400,000 Embark customers. 

Read more: Mastercard Teams With Lloyds Bank For Open Banking API 

A few days prior to the Embark Group acquisition, Lloyds Bank announced a partnership with Mastercard to offer PayFrom Bank, an API-driven solution that gives customers the ability to make direct payments to merchants from their bank accounts.