The ATM is a ubiquitous device in contemporary life. The fact that it allows us to take cash from our bank accounts as well as to access multiple financial services makes it essential in the operation of the financial system, the economy, and the global payments system. Cash and Dash, by Bernardo Batiz-Lazo, professor at Bangor Business School, is in principle a story of that “hole in the wall.” However, it actually is the history of more than seven decades of innovation in retail banking. Certainly, the book constitutes a relevant contribution to our understanding of the origins of the digital economy and the recent evolution of global capitalism, given that the banking industry is a central pillar for both.

An erudite and meticulously documented research, Cash and Dash amalgamates financial history, business history, and history of technological innovation. The book is guided by three central ideas to explain the evolution of the ATM. The first is that this innovation is not the result of spontaneous invention, a popular platitude. Although there was a first American patent in 1959, the technological change of the ATM comes from a cumulative process of inventions, which converged on the device we know today. For economic historians, it is evident that the book illustrates Joel Mokyr’s notion that the innovation process results from the intervention of historical accidents, the scale of the market, the possibility of dissemination, the cultural environment, as well as the specificity of time and place (The Lever of Riches Technological Creativity and Economic Progress, Oxord University Press, 1992).

The second central idea that Batiz-Lazo addresses in the book is the relevance of collaboration to explain the global scope of ATM innovation. The proliferation of ATMs required collaboration between engineers and technicians working together with bankers. As time went by, the collaboration also included competing companies; that is cooperation between banks at national and international levels necessary to constitute wider and more effective distribution networks. The history of the ATM in this book is, therefore, an excuse to narrate a larger history of how cooperation between different industries, as well as between companies, was a core ingredient in the technological evolution of financial services. This cooperation, in turn, allowed the formation of networks that later on constituted the pipelines of automated payment systems and, eventually, of the digital economy.

A third leading idea, implicit throughout the narrative, is that technological change in retail financial services is an “essential characteristic of both late twentieth century capitalism and globalization.” Thus, according to the author, technological innovation has not only influenced the economy but also generated broad cultural change, both within the financial system and among its clients.

The book narrates this history in 10 Chapters. The earliest evidence of a functional cash dispenser is from April 1961. It was the Bankograph of Luther Simjian, adopted by The National City Bank, in a New York branch. Chapters 2 and 3 of the book explain how different patents and manufacturers laid the milestones of the ATM in different nations (Chapter 3 focuses on the United Kingdom). Chapter 2 debunks the simplistic idea that there was a unique invention. In fact, a cash dispenser was an idea that is registered in patents since the early twentieth century. In the early moments of the introduction of the cash machine, every country had distinct dominant uses. For example, in the United Kingdom, the cash machine was a device primarily for extracting cash, while in the United States it was most frequently used for cash deposits. However, the necessary conditions for a takeoff of the ATM worldwide emerged from the 1950s onwards, when retail banking expanded and banks adopted computers. Information technology in banking, therefore, was the seed of organizational change and transformation in retail services. Examples of this can be found in the introduction of the bank credit card, as well as the gradual automation of banking operations and payments, issues previously studied by the author in an edited volume with J. Carles Maixe-Altes and Paul Thomes (Technological Innovation in Retail Finance. International Historical Perspectives, Routledge, 2011).

Chapters 4, 5, and 6 tell the story of the formation of the ATM network as we know it today. There, the author describes how the formation of distribution networks of the payment system went hand in hand with the expansion of the ATM network. The integration into networks led to the transition of the ATM, from a cash dispenser device to being the endpoint of a platform for access to various services as well as customer account information. For this development, proprietary, local, and national networks first emerged. Then these networks took an international dimension. That is why these chapters are an important contribution to our understanding of the transformation of the world’s payment systems. Here, the book explains an important and little understood aspect in the global financial history: the formation of the On-line System, which allowed the immediate transmission of information and the automatic settlement of accounts. The incorporation of On-line Systems was a process that developed mainly throughout the 1970s and 1980s and diffused to all the banking systems in the world. In turn, the development of independent ATM companies ended up being key for the globalization of this technology.

As Batiz-Lazo explains in Chapter 8 (“Earning People’s Trust”), trust was an indispensable ingredient for the evolution of the ATM shared networks in which cooperation among competing firms allowed a massive common infrastructure to deliver services. First, trust was necessary for the formation of networks among financial intermediaries and other corporate actors, such as independent ATM providers, clearing houses and retailers. Second, the trust of clients was imperative for the expansion of an innovative technology. As the book illustrates, the ATM from its origins presented failures in its operation. Consequently, its acceptance depended on ultimately gaining user confidence in its reliability, especially because for bank clients it was the beginning of the end of the human interface in banking services.

The last chapters of the book address the future, such as the role of the ATM as a replacement for the traditional bank branch, as a door to digital financial services, and as a gateway to the cashless society. In this way, the book ends connecting past history with the future of payments.

Although the book is a thorough study of the evolution of the ATM, some reviewers have expressed concerns with its superficial treatment of the regulation of payment networks. However, the book allows us to understand clearly how these networks were constructed, and therefore to understand aspects that economists from industrial organization and economics of regulation take for granted. Likewise, the book explains little about the role ATMs play as part of the distribution of cash in the economy: how cash arrives from the central bank to people through banks and the implications of this process for monetary policy.

Moreover, the author provides a rich Appendix with information on Technological and Regulatory Milestones and makes all the data supporting the analysis available for download (p. 324). Both are useful material for further studies.

Without a doubt, Batiz-Lazo’s book is a relevant scholarly contribution of the last seven decades of innovation in retail banking services. It will become indispensable reading for students of the history technology and of banking interested in understanding the roots of the digital economy and its inherent cultural revolution.