Origins of the modern concept of a cashless society, 1950s-1970s

In this chapter we focus on the emergence of the idea of a “cashless/checkless society” in the 1960s as an example of how futuristic visions often drive new applications long before their economic viability is established. Variants of the “cashless/checkless society” vision appear throughout the developed world during the second half of the twentieth century, but for the sake of clarity and brevity, we will discuss the form it took in the United States from 1950s through the 1970s. As a result we illustrate how consensus that can drive actual technological developments is a key feature of how applications of information technology have been responsible for the increase in productivity of business organizations during the late twentieth century.