Common use of A Short History of Electronic Banking Clause in Contracts

A Short History of Electronic Banking. The electronic transfer of money was already offered in 1871 as a service [Western Union 2012]*. However, transmitting money orders through a telegraph relied on op- erators to translate between human language and Xxxxx code. It would take almost 110 years before banking customers could do something similar themselves from the comfort of their homes. Starting from the beginning of the 1980s, it became possible for customers to simply call the bank and talk to an employee through a telephone instead of visiting a branch office [Allchin 2012]*. Customers were capable of managing their account remotely. However, employing call operators to assist customers is expensive. Xxxxx looked at ways to remove the bank employee from the process. The most obvious approach was to let customers interact with a bank computer. Introduced in 1983, PRONTO was the first electronic banking system that did not rely on bank employees to be used by customers. Access to the system was possible with various types of home computers and a modem [Xxxxx 1983]*. Similar systems soon followed. An example is Citibank’s Direct Access, which could be accessed through a Commodore 64 or a phone with an embedded terminal [Xxxxx 2012]*. These pioneers share a technical characteristic, which is that they all relied on proprietary terminal- based software. If a home computer was used, it was little more than a gateway to the user interface provided by the bank’s computer. This changed slowly at the end of the 1980s and during the 1990s. Having a contin- uous connection with a bank through a phone line to conduct banking business was expensive. To reduce costs (and with that, make it more accessible), so-called “home banking software” was developed. Utilizing the increase in processing power, memory, ACM Computing Surveys, Vol. 49, No. 4, Article 61, Publication date: December 2016.