Cash and Dash

Abstract

Cash and Dash looks at the origins and development of the automated teller machine (ATM) as means to provide the unifying thread to explain changes in retail banking brought about by and around the introduction of computer technology. Main themes include an explanation of why technological change is slow in retail financial markets, and how different groups of people and organizations interact to shape a particular technology. Documentary evidence helps to clarify the myth of the single inventor and details the monumental task to deliver digital banking for retail consumers. Of particular importance for banks around the world throughout this task, was the need to balance new and unintended uses of a device by consumers as opposed to solving impending technical issues and gaining consumers’ trust, acceptance, and high usage. Research illuminates the progress of an industry-specific innovation becoming a novelty and how new payment devices embed in everyday life. The story in Cash and Dash also illustrates that serious ethical and political issues can emerge while adopting, making operational, and maintaining a particular technology within and around retail financial institutions. This approach contrasts with others that perceive technological change as external, neutral, and devoid of context and social setting. The book aims to keep the focus of the narrative off obsolescence and on maintenance and reinvention, while also allowing space to provide conceptual underpinnings and celebrating industry milestones. In short, Cash and Dash recounts a story of decisions about capital investments, business strategies, and technological evolution, and how these were followed by decisions dealing with legacy systems, personnel, standards, locations, and whether machines could become a source of competitive advantage in retail banking.

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