Aggressive efforts to improve computer instruction in low income schools, compensate for less rich educational environments with creative use of the Internet, and prepare welfare families for modern clerical and data processing jobs could undermine some widespread assumptions pretty quickly, as could aggressive marketing of senior citizen computer access and services. The most rapidly growing demographic group currently on the Internet is retirees.
For all of these reasons, I would be willing to bet that, despite the relatively slow pace of change in retail payments over the past several decades and despite Americans’ long-standing affection for the convenience, flexibility and familiarity of the paper check, we are likely to get to some sort of tipping point early in the next century (less than a decade from now) after which electronic retail payments quite quickly become the norm and the volume of checks falls rapidly.