According to Housingwire.com, the new gTLD, .BANK, more than 3,000 financial institutions applied for .BANK domain names after the general availability period for the domain names began on June 23.
Since .Bank has qualification requirements which have to be verified it’s not like a normal domain registration where you go to your registrar of choice, register the domain name and seconds later the domain is useable.
In .Bank you have to apply for the domain name and its only granted after the verification checks are completed so domain name are not added to the zone file upon registration/
Last week fTLD Registry Services the registry behind the new gTLD .Bank announced it received over 700 domain name registrations during Sunrise period by trademark holders at a cost of $750+ per registration.
General Availability (GA) for the gTLD .BANK opened today for all eligible members of the banking industry.
If this report is correct then assuming all domain applications met the requirements for a .Bank domain name then the number of .Bank domains should be around 3,700.
At a retail cost of somewhere around $1,000 that is the making of a very successful and profitable new gTLD registry.
