Bank kiosks enjoyed a brief spell of popularity in the late 1990s when American retail banking executives, flush with the optimism of the dotcom boom, deployed hundreds of them in the US market.

The idea was to migrate customers from expensive branch transactions to cheaper high-tech ones conducted over the internet or by telephone. But like most dotcom dreams, this one evaporated when the customers just didn't materialise.

Big US banks such as Bank of American and regional powerhouse First Union (now national giant Wachovia) persisted with the idea, but by pointing, rather than pushing, customers in the direction of the kiosk. Now Halifax is placing a bet on the delivery channel with a pilot kiosk, called Halifax Xtra, in Scotch Hall shopping centre in Drogheda. And the relative newcomer to Irish retail banking seems to have learned the American lesson: don't overpromise.

The kiosk is staffed by four sales and service personnel, although it won't offer cash transactions. The ultimate goal is to make Xtra a new sales outlet, not just an information booth with a couple of phones and an internet point. In other words, not the sort of kiosks the Americans have been assiduously ignoring for a decade.

Here's the Irish pitch: Halifax still has more branches to open, but in a market where AIB and Bank of Ireland dominate retail banking, challengers have to get in front of the customers. Shopping centre kiosks bring the bank into a high footfall area with high customer density at a relatively low cost. Moreover, kiosks are semi-portable: if they don't work in one location, it's simple and cheap to pack them up and move them to a more promising spot.

Wherever a kiosk happens to be, the trick is to get people to stop shopping long enough to fill out an application for a current account or loan at the kiosk.

Banking products aren't impulse buys, which explains why Halifax . . . despite having objectively very competitive credit card and current account offerings . . .struggles to dislodge business from its bigger rivals. For that reason, Xtra is as much about branding and image projection as sales.

"We're trying to get through to customers that we're different. We're about more than just good-value products, " the bank said.

Halifax is "testing the concept" at this stage and will stay in Scotch Hall until the end of the year, but the bank has already earmarked six other locations for kiosks, according to a spokesman.