Who needs an Irish bank account any more?

For everyday life? Fewer people than the banks would care to admit. That’s just the truth of it.

You can get paid into Revolut, N26 or Wise and Monzo is coming too. You can pay for your coffee with your phone, split a bill in seconds, send money across Europe, pay your rent, pay Revenue, pay your subscriptions and go about your business without once setting foot in a branch. For a growing number of people, the traditional bank has become a kind of financial backdrop rather than a central character. In fact, for business banking the likes of Revolut are so much easier to work with (and opening the account is painless compared to the traditional banks), that we see more and more people using them for that.

That would have sounded outlandish a decade ago. Now it’s normal.

So if the question is whether you need an Irish bank for ordinary spending, direct debits, online purchases and day-to-day money management, the answer is increasingly no. Not in the way you once did.

But that doesn’t mean the old banks are irrelevant. It just means their usefulness has been pushed into narrower territory, and that territory is mostly the awkward stuff. The clunky stuff. The moments when the modern system meets the real world and discovers that the real world still has cash, paper, signatures, elderly relatives, solicitors and people who don’t care how elegant your app is.

That’s where the branch still earns its keep.

Take large cash withdrawals. If you need a meaningful sum in notes, this is one of the few moments where digital-first banking suddenly looks a bit flimsy. An app is great until you need actual money in your hand and discover there are limits, procedures and delays. The same goes for bank drafts. It sounds old-fashioned because it is old-fashioned, but old-fashioned does not mean extinct. In property transactions, legal settlements, certain purchases, and in dealings with people who still like a paper instrument they can physically hold, the bank draft survives because trust often lags technology.

The same thing applies to foreign cash. Cards and digital wallets are brilliant, and in many cases better value, but if you want sterling or dollars in your pocket before you travel, old banks still have a role. Not a glamorous one, but a real one.

Then there is the cash economy, which many commentators speak about as if it no longer exists. That’s nonsense. Plenty of people still receive physical cash. Small traders, clubs, fundraising groups, family events, market sellers, side businesses, cafés, schools, churches and local organisations all still run into the same basic problem: if money comes in as notes and coins, you need somewhere for it to go. That means lodgements. It means coin bags. It means branch counters, machines, safes and all the unsexy plumbing of financial life. Older people haven’t really adjusted to the ne0-banks either, you can’t expect digital ease to work for them when many are still wedded to getting things in the post.

Cheques belong in the same category. Everybody says cheques are dying, and they are, but dying is not the same as dead. Refunds, estates, older people, clubs, legal matters and the occasional business transaction still arrive in cheque form, and when they do, somebody has to lodge them.

That’s before you get to the messier areas of life, which are usually the ones that reveal what banking is really for. Bereavements. Identity checks. Powers of attorney. Mandates. Executors. Disputes over who has authority on an account. Accessibility needs. Vulnerable customers who don’t want a chatbot and shouldn’t be expected to settle for one. In theory much of this can begin online. In practice, plenty of it ends up in a branch because banks like documents, signatures and face-to-face accountability when anything has legal consequences.

And then there’s the most irritating category of all: the third party who insists on a “real bank”.

This is not always logical, but logic has never fully governed financial behaviour. Some solicitors, vendors, institutions, clubs or counterparties simply feel more comfortable when they see one of the legacy Irish banks involved. You may think that’s outdated, and you may be right, but being right is not always the same thing as getting the transaction over the line. In real life, people often choose the path that avoids delay rather than the one that wins the philosophical argument.

That is the part worth remembering.

The debate is no longer about whether fintech can replace a bank for ordinary life. In many cases it already has. The real question is where the replacement stops working. That is where the old banks still live: in the exceptions, the edge cases, the annoying realities, the bits of financial life that don’t fit neatly into an app.

So no, most people do not need a traditional Irish bank account in the way they once did.

But some people still need access to a traditional Irish bank when things get untidy. When cash is involved. When paperwork matters. When legal formality appears. When a person on the other side of the transaction says, in effect, “I don’t care how modern this is, I want it done the old way.”

That number is getting smaller every year.

But it is not zero.

And that’s the uncomfortable truth for both sides: the fintech revolution is real, but the old banking world still hangs on wherever money stops being frictionless and starts becoming human.