Suddenly, micropayments are hot again, as techies forge an infrastructure to capture $1.32 trillion in small-dollar cash payments via speedy user-friendly POS devices. Can banks keep control of this emerging payments industry? Ever since the credit card was invented in 1958, futurists have braved the seas of high expectations in search of the land of cashless commerce. Now market researchers think they've found it. First they saw cash payments fall from 60% to 30% of all consumer , transactions between 1995 and 2003, notes TowerGroup vice-president Theodore Iacobuzio. During that time, the share of checks also fell by half, from 30% to 15%.
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