ABSTRACT
Computerization was changing the meaning, significance, and behavior of money in the sixties and seventies; by the end of the eighties it had also changed the way the economic system was organized and how it operated. The new computerized money and payments infrastructure transformed the industrial landscape of America throughout the eighties by eroding the boundaries that separated commercial banking, retailing, and other nonbanking industries. Automated teller machines (ATM) proved to be popular and convenient with the public, the banking industry, and retailers. They soon became a permanent fixture on the public landscape of the new computer-mediated economy. The proliferation of ATM, point-of-sale systems, and computer cards made retailers and the public less dependent on the commercial banks because they could take their business to other financial institutions, savings and loan companies and credit card companies such as American Express. The commercial banks were in effect bypassed—in other words, losing ground to the competition.
