How do you do your banking? Data published recently by the Bank of Israel sheds light on banking patterns of Jerusalemites. In 2021, Jerusalem had 79 bank branches – 9% of the 882 bank branches operating in Israel. For the sake of comparison, in Tel Aviv there were 92 branches that same year (10% of all Israeli bank branches), and in Haifa – 43 (5%). The number of bank accounts registered in Tel Aviv was also higher than in Jerusalem – 1.39 million bank accounts in Tel Aviv (14% of all accounts in Israel), compared to 923,000 in Jerusalem (9% of all accounts).

 In 2021, these 923,000 Jerusalem banking customers performed 16.34 million activities  in their banks – an average of 17.7 per customer. Jerusalemites thus carry out more banking activities on the average than the overall Israel average (14.8 activities per year) and than Haifa’s average (13.9), and is second only to Tel Aviv (19.2).

Activities conducted physically at the bank branches represented 12% of all activities, similar to the national average (13%), and higher than in Tel Aviv (9%). It appears that in Haifa many bank customers prefer physical presence at the bank, with 17% of activities performed at the bank branches themselves.

About a quarter of banking activities in Jerusalem were conducted at automatic tellers – higher than in Israel at large (20%), and also higher than in other major cities such as Haifa (16%) and Tel Aviv (10%).

Banking app usage was less popular in Jerusalem compared to Israel at large – 28% compared to 39%, respectively. Tel Aviv customers performed most of their banking activities via banking apps – about two-thirds of all activities. In contrast, the percentage of banking activities conducted via banking websites by Jerusalem customers (24% of activity) was higher than in Israel at large (20%) and higher than in Tel Aviv (12%).

Source: Bank of Israel