Electronics wins bank paper chase

Electronics wins bank paper chase

Electronic transactions overtook paper in the UK high street banking sector for the first time earlier this year. According to analysts at Merrill Lynch, volumes of paper such as cheques now account for 46.9 per cent of the total, down from 50 per cent at the start of the year. The investment bank forecasts that for 1995 as a whole there will be 2.1 billion paper transactions and 2.3 billion electronic. A 4 per cent erosion in "market share," for paper transactions, means a switch of 174 million transactions from paper to electronic. The accelerating shift towards electronic transactions at automated tellers and their like is expected to lead to further large job cuts as banks continue to trim costs.