"Examines trend toward digital means of consumer payments, asking several questions: How will digital money evolve? What impacts will technologies such as wireless devices have on payment for goods and services? What other technologies await consumers? And what will the consumer payments...

Though checks' popularity is now waning in favor of electronic payments, checks were, for much of the twentieth century, the most widely used noncash payment method in the United States. How did such a relatively inefficient form of payment become so dominant? This article traces the historical...