[mbreese]

Or, it self selects out people who would cost more money in support to the bank. If you’re in their time zone (and awake when they are), the bank could save money by only needing to have support available at certain times.

Similarly, they may not want to have you in their community. So, the community they form might be smaller, but more aligned with what they want.

They are definitely reducing their pool of customers, but maybe they are still attracting the customers they want. Why not let the market decide if they can find enough customers with this approach.

Honestly, the banks I use in the US often do something similar. It’s not as bad as this, and only on their online banking site, not their marketing site. They have maintenance windows late at night (in their time zone), and don’t allow logins during that time. It’s not always every night, but it’s often enough that I’ve noticed (at 3-4am).

[jackson1442]

> the bank could save money by only needing to have support available at certain times.

You don't need live support to run a website, you can experience this on most websites that have live support available if you go to their site at 1am local.

[mbreese]

No, but the signal is, “when the website is up, we’re here”.

I can’t say I’d call this a smart move, but if they still have enough customers to make it worthwhile, I can’t say it’s a bad move. Now, if they can’t get customers or can’t grow because of this, the market will tell them it’s a bad idea.

It’s definitely sub-optimal, from a growth point of view. But so long as it works for them and their customers, why should I care?

Are they the only bank for a region? Or is using them required for some purpose?

[jackson1442]

I fail to see how that’s a useful signal.

The IRS does this on their site to get an EIN[0]. I don’t know why, but it’s bad UX and restricts the usefulness of the site.

[0]: https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...