A bank branch is the retail or primary customer-facing side of a bank, where customers can perform basic transactions such as setting up accounts, making withdrawals, deposits, and transfers, and receiving basic financial services from their bankers. A bank branch must be staffed; automatic banking centers are not included in this usage.

Staff must provide the banking service. An unstaffed collection of cash machines does not meet the bank-branch definition.

A loan office specializes in lending without other banking services. A branch can instead support customer accounts and ordinary transactions as well as other financial services.