What Issues do They Raise? During the last decade, an assortment of bankers, other members of the financial community, and computer specialists have been talking about plans for payments systems based on electronic impulses rather than paper checks, money, credit card chits, and receipts. Such systems promise to cut the cost of paper processing'to reduce petty theft, and support convenient add-on services such as automatic payroll deposits2. The various Electronic Funds Transfer Systems (EFTS) 3 that would support such services include networks for: automatically clearing checks and debiting and crediting individual accounts: directly debiting and crediting individual bank accounts from point of sale (POS) terminals in retail stores: and providing cash on demand 24 hours a day through" automatic tellers." While scenarios of cashless and checkless societies encourage one to imagine interested nationwide networks, in fact different components can operate feasibly without such large scale integration. Currently several of these technologies are being used in some prototype form, independently of each other. BankAmericard has installed a nationwide network to transmit electronic credit receipts. Dozens of banks have installed automatic tellers. And about two dozen savings and loan associations are experimenting with POS terminals linking supermarkets and department stores to individual bank accounts. In July, 1976, there are no networks which automate the processing of checks between individual accounts at different banks.