CITI going sandbox

 In the lean years following the financial crisis, Citigroup Inc. made an unintentional bet on the future of banking, and it is starting to pay off.

While Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. were gobbling up cheap deposits at their thousands of branches around the U.S., Citigroup was shrinking its footprint, focusing on a handful of big cities to right itself after its near-collapse.

Now the bank’s executives are convinced that many U.S. consumers are finally ready to leave the branch behind and fully embrace digital banking. Citigroup added roughly $1 billion in digital deposits in the first quarter, more than all of last year. About two-thirds of that total came from new customers, and a little more than half came from people who don’t live near any of the bank’s roughly 700 branches.
In recent months, the bank has reorganized its consumer unit, knocking down walls between banking and cards. It rolled out a new account through its mobile app aimed at credit-card customers. And it is targeting potential customers with mobile-banking offers tied to the rewards they get for cards.
“For the 21st century, we are glad we never got the ballast of an extra 4,000 branches,” said Stephen Bird, the bank’s chief executive of global consumer banking. “I’m certain it’s going to turn out to be a very fortuitous thing.”