Introduction

‘In fact, the most striking trend within the retail payments sector over the last decade is the rapid decline in the use of cheques in Australia, from more than 80% of the dollar value of non-cash retail payments in 1995 to less than 30% in 2002. At the same time, the electronic [payments] system has expanded rapidly…rapid growth in overall EFT debit card usage of about 10% per year’.

‘[Compliance and monitoring data from the Australian regulators] exhibits an increasing number of EFT transactions reported as “unauthorised”…the adverse trend is evidenced by the incidence of complaints of unauthorised EFT transactions increasing dramatically from 14 per million EFT transactions in 1995 to 41 per million in 2002’.

‘Despite EFT debit’s rapid growth and prominence, the determinants and repercussions of EFT debit use have largely escaped academic scrutiny’.

‘The approach for regulating unauthorized [EFT] consumer transfers [under American legislation] is entirely different [to self-regulating codes of conduct]…and is worth considering elsewhere’.