Consumer reporter Roseanne Colletti explains why banks now want you to linger and why they may even offer you coffee to stay.

It's an about-face from an era of urging customers to do all their banking online and with ATMs. Now the industry is opening up branches right and left, only new branches are more likely to be called stores or boutiques. In fact, a Pennsylavnia bank is renaming its newest branches The Gold Cafe. It's about image and atmosphere.

You migh think you're walking into a trendy Manhattan cafe. The bar stools, the plasma screen TV and the coffee bar with an assortment of fresh-drip flavors: Irish cream perhaps, or German chocolate cake. But what's really brewing here is banking.

There are also plush armchairs next to coffee tables with flat screen desktop computers.

Long Island-based Bank of Smithtown is adding these amenities to some of its branches to attract new customers.

Bank Chairman Brad Rock said the payoff for the bank has been bigger than expected.

"Typically a bank like this in the suburbs would do $1 million to $1.5 million a month (and) would be a fairly successful branch," said Rock. "When we first opened, this branch did a $1 million a week for the first 25 weeks."

This isn't the only bank makeover in the industry. A number of banks are undergoing radical face-lifts to eliminate those rigid lines and closed spaces.

For example, at Washington Mutual, the tellers assist customers at free-standing tables with computer screens. There is even a children's play area to keep kids entertained while parents bank.

In Oregon and California, Umpqua Bank is building new branches that not only include Wi-Fi Internet access, but a movie screen that drops down for movie nights.

What's driving these kinder, gentler banks is fierce competition.

"There has been an increase in the flow of money into the stock market, into mutual funds so bank deposits have been squeezed in general," said Rock. "So as people ratchet up their competitive juices, there's more competition for fewer deposits."

For some customers, the changes are a bit of a culture shock and they don't quite know what to make of it.

Something else you may notice: branches may be smaller … more intimate. And sometimes smaller means less expensive to build, a way of offsetting slower growth and rising construction costs.