Electronic commerce revisited

In 1977 William F. Baxter, Paul H. Cootner, and Kenneth E. Scott coauthored a book predicting the development of competitive networks of point of sale terminals and the significant growth of credit and debit cards which would displace the use of cash and checks. In this article, Professor Kenneth E. Scott reviews these forecasts and finds legal developments have hampered t he formation of competitive networks. In terms of payment systems, debit ca rd use has not yet grown as much as predicted while the use of cash has rem ained relatively stable and the use of checks has declined. By contrast, cr edit card use has doubled over the past twenty years.