Girobank
| Company type | Statutory corporation (1968) Public limited company (1988) |
|---|---|
| Industry | Financial services |
| Founded | 1968 |
| Defunct | 2003 |
| Fate | Privatised |
| Successor | Alliance & Leicester |
| Headquarters | Bootle, Merseyside |
| Products | Postal giro, retail banking |
National Girobank was a British public sector financial institution run by the General Post Office that opened for business in October 1968. It was initially called National Giro then National Girobank and finally Girobank plc, before being absorbed into Alliance & Leicester in 2003.
It was the first bank in Europe to adopt OCR (optical character recognition) technology; the first bank to offer interest-bearing current accounts, and the first in Europe to offer telephone banking.