The culmination of all this is the smart card. Subject to more clever marketing, home banking will develop to overtake regular banking. The borders between social institutions will blur. Home and office will merge. So will the office, the car, the aeroplane and the hotel.
Many hotels provide their guests with business centres.
On the face of it, this should have constituted no surprise. This power generated awe and respect. Money is as specific a commodity as any and necessitates the availability of both expertise and vast historical databases. A typical collaboration involves a retail outlet and a bank. The retail outlet invoices the customers, collects the money, charges the credit card, collects the slips and deposits them in the bank.