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Credit Cards
Diners Club Creates the first portable payment system called the credit card. This allowed for a whole new industry to develop and become integrated into the banking industry. -
ATM Machines
“the humble ATM…was really the synthesis of several emerging innovations,” including computer displays, magnetic stripe cards, algorithms that link an encrypted PIN with a customer’s accounts and networks that interlink a bank account to ATMs across the world -
FTP Protocol
Introduced by computer scientist J.C.R. Licklider in 1973, the US Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) is often credited with providing a vision of how computers could be networked together. Bassous notes that in the early days of the ACH network, “Customers would drive over with a floppy disk or a tape with the ACH information.” -
Green Screen Core Processor
Created in 1976 as the first computer system to allow for banks to process banking transactions. -
Electronic Cash Counters
Such counters were first introduced in Great Britain in 1980 and made bank tellers’ jobs easier. Today, some banks maintain self-serve coin counters in their lobbies so customers can see just how much money that shoebox on their dresser contains. In 1997, cash recyclers appeared on the scene -
Tablet Computers
Released by GRiD Systems in 1989 and manufactured by Samsung, GRiDPad was considered the first commercially successful tablet computer. Zengel points out that tablets have transformed retail banking by allowing bank employees to move within and even beyond the branch. “Instead of waiting in a line for the teller to become available, the teller might come to the door, greet a customer, sit on the couch with them and serve their needs from a mobile tablet as opposed to a tethered device,” -
PayPal
Established as Confinity in 1998, PayPal earned praise as a user-friendly money transfer service. On the heels of PayPal came other person-to-person (p2p) payment innovations like Venmo, Popmoney and Zelle. Greg Bloh, CEO of TransCard in Chattanooga, Tenn., describes the arrival of PayPal as a watershed event. He contends that PayPal and then Venmo succeeded because they “took advantage of an account system that wasn’t working for the consumer.” -
Digital Check Clearing
With the Check Clearing for the 21st Century (Check 21) Act of 2004, a check recipient could make a digital copy of a check and then process that check electronically. Jack Henry’s Zengel points out that check imaging “eliminated a lot of paper and put a lot of couriers out of business -
The Iphone
Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone at the Macworld convention on Jan. 9, 2007, and the first iPhone was released to the public five-and-a-half months later. Apple Inc. would eventually move into mobile payments: On Sept. 9, 2014, Apple Pay was launched, allowing payments to be accepted at the point of sale from stored and encrypted payment card information on mobile devices. -
Bitcoin
The convergence of digital currency bitcoin, the explosion of social media and the global financial crisis of 2007-2009 spurred people to question norms, according to Travis D. Dulaney, CEO of Push Payments in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. “[These events] made people think outside the box,” he says. “They realized the status quo isn’t going to work anymore.” -
Facial Recognition
The Panamanian government first installed face recognition systems in 2011 to reduce illicit activity in Tocumen International Airport. Stephen Joseph, business development manager, banking and finance, for market leader in network video Axis Communications, Inc., notes that video analytics are becoming a focus for banks seeking to enhance security -
2015 EMV Chips
iNet’s Brent says EMV chips make cards far more secure because the information transmitted is encrypted and tokenized. Additional security is critical as payments become more integrated, he notes.
