Are computers ready for the checkless society?

Once the furor over the legal and regulatory issues of electronic funds transfer dies down, the data processing industry will find several complications in the development of a systems architecture suitable for implementing a nationwide system. Apart from interface difficulties presented by the equipment and software designs of competing manufacturers, there are complications to the control of such a system that appear to merit the attention of the data processing industry. The purpose of this paper is to stimulate the exchange of opinions on how the industry should cope with differences in end-user protocols, different routing techniques, different methods of controlling terminal devices, the value of various communication line disciplines, and the overall management of a nationwide network.