What does a digital high-street bank look like? According to Alison Brittain, who runs the 2,249-strong network for Lloyds Banking Group, it involves branches where tellers are no longer protected by huge glass screens and are instead able to walk the floor to discuss issues with customers. More self-service tills will be installed and video conferencing in the digital branch will allow customers to ring a call centre for advice on taking out a mortgage, say – a sort of facetime with the bank manager.

Brittain is adamant that embracing digital technology does not mean moving towards a world with no branches at all. “The emergence of a generation that is digital-only is overplayed and we see more value in a multichannel approach,” she said.

Even the very youngest age cohort of Lloyds customers and those most at home with digital technology use a branch once a year, and more than half of all customers use one monthly. Affluent customers with £100,000 in assets, most likely to be aged between 55 and 60, use a branch once a month.

But the pace of change has been swift. Three years ago, Lloyds had no customers using mobile technology, yet it estimates 5 million did so this year, while 14.4 million customers have chosen to go paperless. The bank expects branch transactions to halve in the next three years.

The internet has already had an impact on the call centres banks set up to stop customers calling their branches – call volumes are down 10% year-on-year since 2012.

Lloyds is not the first bank to cite the changing use of technology when making job cuts. Barclays has said there has been a 10% reduction in the use of branches in five years. Some 84 Barclays branches have had sophisticated automated machines installed and the bank has shut around 50 branches in the past 18 months. HSBC has one branch that has no staff at all and has shut 50 branches so far this year.

Brittain does not envisage branches without any staff, but acknowledges that the closures could affect thousands of the bank’s customers. It also means that Lloyds will no longer stand by its previous commitment not to close branches where it is the last bank standing in an area – defined as four miles from the next nearest branch in rural areas and one mile in urban areas. Even so, Lloyds said it will still have a larger estate of branches for its size than rivals, which it claimed, are closing down branches at a faster rate.

Derek French, who runs the Campaign for Community Banking Services, said that branch closures would affect small businesses and “more vulnerable customers”. He calculates that 430 branches have been shut or earmarked for closure this year – twice the figure for 2013.