What Ever Happened to the “Checkless Society”?

In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, a proliferation of articles in law reviews and other scholarly journals predicted a fundamental change in the payments systems in the United States. The “checkless society” was hailed as the coming thing-the latest and best innovation to come along in the vast areas of law covered by the Uniform Commercial Code provisions governing commercial paper and bank collections. Despite the claims that present technology is capable of effecting basic alterations in the existing check collection and payment systems, changes have been slow to come and are coming with deliberate speed rather than the predicted great haste.