EFT and the Process of Change

Over the past several hundred years, the United States has developed a unique financial-service system. Private financial intermediaries have long offered the public a wider range of financial institutions—such as commercial banks, savings and loan institutions, mutual savings banks, and credit unions—than exist in other nations. The variety of these institutions has in turn been protected by our government’s tendency to define specialized functions for each class of institution and to supervise the activities that support them.