Terry Downes remembers the elderly woman who visited her safety deposit box several times a week. Staff noticed she often appeared emotional after the visits.
Eventually, she confided that inside were cherished mementos of her late husband—a handkerchief, jewelry and photographs connecting her to precious memories.
“That woman could never in a million years have got a safety deposit box with the bank,” Downes explained, “and yet, to her, that stuff was the most valuable thing she’s ever had in her whole life.”
It’s stories like these that drive Downes, founder and CEO of MySafe, a robotics-powered safety deposit box company that expanded to Southern Nevada. The innovative security solution has three locations across the Valley—on Durango Drive, Rainbow Boulevard and Valle Verde Drive in Henderson—with plans for 27 total U.S. sites over the next 18 months.
“We’ve had a fantastic reaction,” Downes said. “Nevada made it easy from a structural point of view.”
The units, which come from a Japanese manufacturer and incorporate robotics technology, are operating in financial institutions throughout South Korea, Japan and various major banks across Asia, Downes explained. “I can’t take credit for creating them,” he quipped.
The MySafe deposit boxes are stored with “every piece of security you can think of,” he said, including vibration sensors and earthquake and fire alarms.
The boxes are vacuum-packed in an armored vault, creating a sealed unit that Downes emphasized is not a traditional room with a door you can walk through.
“Basically they put an ATM on the front of it, except that, instead of cash coming out, it’s your safety deposit box that pops up in front of you,” he said. “So that’s the actual physical infrastructure.”
Among other security measures, guests must insert their finger into a biometric reader that measures blood flow, which differs from a fingerprint in that the client must be alive when using the device, Downes said. The box is then delivered by the robotics within 10 seconds in a private room, he said.
“You’re the only person in the world with a key to that box,” Downes said. “They’re unique. There’s no replacements. There’s no spare. We don’t keep a box. You’re completely in there on your own.”
Michael Johnston, a retired Henderson Police Department captain who now operates Code 4 Consulting & Private Investigation, praised MySafe’s four-layer security approach that clients must pass through to access their safety deposit box: card access, four-digit PINs, biometrics and an individual key.
“So those four layers, coupled with their external security—the vault dynamics, the protections that it gives, the automation portion, the isolated rooms, and of course, all their security surveillance—makes for a very safe location for someone to access their valuables,” Johnston said.
The concept behind MySafe emerged when Downes, an Irish native with military and corporate security experience, identified a gap in the market after banks began reducing safety deposit box services due to profitability concerns.
“In Ireland, it was a very ugly problem,” Downes recalled. “I was asked if I could take a look to see what the solution was. And I very quickly realized the problem we had in Ireland was exactly the same to a greater or lesser extent, in many, many countries all over the world.”
Downes emphasized that MySafe locations are designed to be small and community-oriented, with each site serving approximately 300 clients. This approach has already made a difference for customers who previously couldn’t access such services through traditional banks, he said.
“It completely changed the face of the industry and made it accessible and convenient,” Downes said. “And the banks, for at least a decade more, have been telling the market, ‘Nobody wants this. This is old fashioned. The service isn’t required anymore.’ But ... nothing could be further from the truth.”
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