Abstract
It is called by many names—cashless society; paperless society; checkless society; even the less-check society! But it all forecasts one thing, a major change in the payments mechanism that we are so familiar with today. | What is the reason behind this proposed change in our way of carrying out financial transactions? The basic answer revolves around the fact that the rising tide of checks and the enormous cost of processing these checks through the financial hierarchy dictates' the need for a change. We write over 75 million checks every business day in our country! This adds up to l8 billion checks every year! And these figures are increasing 7% annually. Checks are written on 14,000 commercial banks and originate from 70 million checking accounts. It now costs the banks about 3.3 billion dollars a year to handle and process these checks. This paper volume and the costs of processing checks are continuing to spiral in spite of all the new technology and computer systems in use today. | What does the term checkless or less-check society connotate? Mr. W.Putnam Livingstone, Vice President of the Bankers Trust Company in New York City, has this definition: | "What we are talking about should be thought of as a nationwide financial information utility. It may include not only movement of money, but also credit, credit information, and data that will help in monitoring the country's economic pulse." | To reiterate, the primary impetus today for improving the payments mechanism stems from the realization by bankers of the enormous cost of the rising tide of paperwork. They also recognize that there are other ways of moving money besides the physical effort of preparing and exchanging documents. The time when this financial utility will become a reality is closer than has been anticipated.