Banking
James McDermott: For a bank that is supposed to ‘back brave’, AIB’s cashless escapade was cowardly
Going cashless may have been a surreptitious first step to closing branches because, without cash, there is less footfall, which can then be blamed for closure
In the 1996 movie Jerry Maguire, Tom Cruise plays a sports agent with just one client, Rod Tidwell, who provides him with a simple standing instruction: show me the money. At times this week it seemed that Tidwell might become the unlikely poster boy for the broad cross-section of Irish society which forced AIB to reverse its decision to make 70 of its 170 branches cashless.
The lender had intended to deepen its existing relationship ...