- Passbooks to be replaced by 2025
- New wallet with mini-statements introduced
- Old passbooks unusable from February 2025
Nationwide Building Society will discontinue passbooks in their existing form from the beginning of February 2025; MoneyMoney can exclusively report.
A concerned employee claims it is beginning to completely eliminate passbooks, a move recently confirmed by Britain’s largest mutual.
Nationwide no longer offers new passbook accounts. It claims that only 2% of its 16 million customers, or approximately 120,000 members, presently use them.
Passbook savings accounts have a real notepad, allowing the holder to record deposits and withdrawals.
Nationwide said it is taking advantage of the opportunity to modernize passbooks for seven months until February 2025.
Customers who maintain their passbooks will be given a savings wallet’ instead. This wallet contains a Nationwide card that can only be used in a Nationwide branch.
This is MoneyMoney believes that the wallet will also have a spot for printed’ mini-statements, ‘ which clients would receive when they deposit or withdraw funds at a branch.
Customers can keep the statements in their wallets to keep track of their transactions, but they are no longer in book format like old passbooks.
After February 1, 2025, customers who already have a passbook will be unable to use it in its current form.
Customers who want the new version of the passbooks will be able to use their old ones at the beginning of February 2025.
Their account will remain open; clients will continue to be able to utilize their account.
Nationwide will contact customers and clarify the changes as it replaces old passbooks with a new statement-based version beginning at the end of this month.
The building society will also hire temporary staff inside the branch network to help staff move from the old to the new passbooks, as it does at other times of the year, particularly during Isa season.
According to the statement, workers at the branch will assist older and vulnerable customers during the seven-month transition period.
Nationwide has been criticized for refusing to give its 16 million members a role in Virgin Money’s contentious merger.
It is about to hold its annual general meeting, and members can vote until July 15.
According to a Nationwide insider, CEO Debbie Crosbie is on ‘a mad race’ to restructure the society network.
A Nationwide spokeswoman stated, ‘We don’t recognize that at all. We made our branch pledge, and nothing will alter.
Nationwide now operates 605 branches, making it the largest branch network on the high street.
The source said, ‘Many of my clients have their pensions paid into their passbooks, many of them are elderly, but some are younger and vulnerable, and the only way they can manage their MoneyMoney is to come to the counter to retrieve their cash.
‘They prefer to see the transaction in the book and understand it rather than receiving a printed statement.
‘The passbook is roughly ten pages long and simple to use and keep, and there are several reasons why they choose to use the counter over a cash machine.
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‘This includes persons with impairments, those who have dementia or are autistic, and those who have been scammed – you name it, we treat them with dignity and courtesy.’
The Nationwide Insider also warned that a hurry to phase out passbooks could result in many complaints.
A Nationwide spokesman stated, “We are modernizing passbooks rather than removing them, but banking in the branch is not changing.”
‘We are keeping the benefits our passbook clients love the most: face-to-face service and a physical record of transactions.
‘As the UK’s largest building society, we are investing in our infrastructure to provide the products and services our customers expect from a contemporary mutual.’
