Night shift in banks in Ireland in late 1990s and early 2000s.

Probably international trading and the emergence of the internet. It’s always breakfast time somewhere.

The bit I'm aware of wasn't because of advanced banking services but manual transactions (though I'm not saying the advanced stuff didn't exist - just I've no info on that side of things).

Relative did it for BoI and maybe AIB - involved manually executing transfers and processing cheques at night. As G_R said, stuff that has since been automated and many people at the time thought was already automated and handled by computers. No degree in banking required - it operated with low paid staff like a call centre, just processing instead of taking calls.

remember that,was driving a taxi on nights at the time and the radio company i was with had the account for one of the banks,think the way it worked was the small branches would send their paper transactions to the bigger branches,they in turn would manually put that on to these big tape yokes,thats what they were called anyway,and then from around 9pm the calls would come in from those branches to pick up the tapes to take to the main computer centre,the one i dropped to was cabinteely,was a good job if you could time it right and get the call,might be a dozen or 20 odd pickups,just those tape things,all the bigger branches had staff in them until at least midnight at the time(late 80s until 2000 when i got out of taxiing) and the computer centre was 24/7

My bro-in-law worked as a trader in the San Francisco Stock Exchange in the 80/90's and he told me he worked mad early shifts like 4am starts

In the 80's and 90's, I worked for an Irish telecoms company that designed and manufactured secure teleconferencing equipment. This was long before general VOIP internet communications and it involved physically connecting and switching multiple telephone lines together and holding large conferences, or splitting them into smaller 'rooms' for breakout discussions. They were used by many of the major world banks, including at the London HQ of Goldman Sachs where staff called in to it from all over their worldwide operation for meetings and updates, at all hours of the day and night.

One day I was sent to London to check out the gear, because conference callers from around the world were having difficulty using the system on a particular stock market conference that was held at 3am. The London office was closed at that time, but elsewhere in the world, staff were scheduled to ring in automatically and discuss strategy for the closing and opening of various stock exchanges. I was told that the pin code access feature would not work for some, and despite inputting the correct four digits, some callers in Asia were being locked out of the conference.

I got to the location in the late afternoon and checked out the equipment, but could find no issue with it. The female manager that was responsible for the area, insisted that the equipment was faulty and I simply had to fix it. When I told her that the only option to investigate further was for me to be present at the console while the conference was taking place at 3am, she was horrified and said that there was no way that she was coming back at that late hour. Against security protocol, she arranged for me to be let into the building at 2.30am on the strict instruction that I went straight to the comms room and left as soon as I was finished.

At 2.30 AM the reception desk security guard let me in and I went to the equipment. I quickly identified the issue as operator error. Some callers were located in underdeveloped countries, still using rotary dial phones, so they were dialing in their pin code, instead of punching the programmed keypad tones that the system could understand.

Having identified the issue, I went to leave at about 3.30 and needed to use the loo. Retracing my steps out, I came across a disabled toilet and went in. There were very few lights operational in the corridors at that hour of the night, the toilet room was in darkness and I couldn't see a light switch. There was however a string hanging from the ceiling and thinking it was a pull light switch, I gave it a go. It was in fact an assistance alarm and a red flashing light and beeping alert started up in the corridor. Security guards appeared from everywhere and I had some explaining to do about who I was and what I was doing sneaking around Goldman Sachs in the small hours of the morning.

I believe that the area manager who had arranged for me to be allowed in unaccompanied, had far more explaining to do, when she was woken from her slumber by a very annoyed security manager, to verify my story.

I'm ex bank employee. Worked from 92-98 in AIB Donnybrook house.

It was the data centre and at night they were processing old big reel tapes that came in from branches and other banks and clients with transactions. It was a big operation.

There was also people working in the cheque clearing department too which was quite big.

Staff that worked the shifts received a 25% shift allowance, so it was worth their while.

Of course i'd say all that work has been replaced not by technology and the demise of cheques.