Your online Wayback Machine

A fascinating article from a 1967 issue of Forbes about some newfangled concept called "electronic money." It correctly forecasts online (or more precisely, automatic) bill-paying, debit cards, national credit-card alliances (i.e. Visa and Mastercard), overdraft protection, direct deposit and credit card firms' hostility toward debit cards. It incorrectly predicts a daily salary, voice-print verification (rather than signatures and PINs) and the end of payroll records.

It also envisions something like ATMs, but imagines them as something located only at banks' branch offices and featuring a video connection to a live teller. For some reason, this is supposed to be cheaper than flesh-and-blood employees at the branch offices, which the machines replace.

What's most interesting about reading an article like this is getting a feel for the culture then, something most history-type articles fail to capture. For instance, Mastercard here is still known as the Inter Bank system and Bank of America has yet to create or license the Visa name.

And it seems that people were far more cavalier about paying their bills. One of the feared roadblocks to electronic money was consumers' unwillingness to see money deducted from their accounts right away. And apparently, all the stores offered deferred payment plans. In one scenario, a housewife happily postpones a bill to buy a TV.

Sears' comments about resisting bank credit cards ("We have an enormous credit card network of our own customers and we're not going to give it up without a fight.") is amusing in light of this. Most entertaining of all, the U.S. Postal Service is described at being overjoyed at the prospect of having to deliver less mail.

Anyway, the article is well worth reading. I'm reading the other old Forbes articles this weekend. I'm sure they included the stories that make the magazine seem especially prescient.