The Blog of Harald

In an article for the upcoming “DaVinci Institute Future of Money Summit”:http://www.futureofmoneysummit.com/index.php, Thomas Frey lists “The Top 10 Inventions in Money Technology”:http://www.futureofmoneysummit.com/top-10-inventions.php, which are:

# The Electronic Cash Register (1906)
# Electronic Money (1918)
# The First Armored Car (1920)
# Credit Bureaus (1937)
# The Automatic Teller Machine (1939)
# The Credit Card (1950)
# Barcodes (1952)
# The Smart Card (1974)
# The Spreadsheet (1978)
# RSA Encryption (1983)

I was amused to note how long it took some of these technologies to become “mainstream” after their invention. Then I got to the conclusion of the article:

bq. Probably the most revealing part of doing this research was seeing the lag time between the technology first being developed and general market acceptance. In the case of the ATM machine, the lag time was over 50 years. We often wonder about the technologies that didn’t make it onto the radar screen – the big things that simply faded from existence before they were able to get any real market feedback.

bq. Several new technologies are making significant inroads into the money world. Micropayment technologies, prepaid credit cards, mobile payment systems, and biometrics are industries on the verge of success. Public policy decisions, general economic conditions, financial backing, and the sheer determination and resolve of the startup team are the primary factors that will separate the winners from the losers as we move forward.