Silver-haired customers distrust online banking, and updating the passbook at the branch is still a daily ritual

One of Hong Kong's largest local retail banks has disclosed that around 1 million customers still rely on the red passbook for day-to-day enquiries, heading to the branch to update it even in wind and rain. Many relatives of elderly customers report that the main reason older people refuse online banking is not a technical barrier, but a long-standing fear of online scams, having their account hacked, or family members operating it without permission; to them, the passbook is a physical token that 'the money is their own'.

Major banks have in recent years pushed hard to transform branches and cut counter staff, but the alternatives on offer (such as an NFC passbook card) still require registering at a branch first and depend on being paired with a smartphone, and so fail to address older people's fundamental doubts about cyber security; the HKMA, too, has no minimum-staffing or waiting-time standard for silver-haired services. This situation, where product and regulation lag in step, leaves silver-haired customers perpetually caught between 'being digitised against their will' and 'queuing at the branch', and although banks roll out new services in the name of inclusion, the core trust gap remains unsolved.