The Industrial Organization of Hong Kong's Progression Toward a Cashless Economy (1960s-2000s)

A dramatic change occurred in retail banking technology in Hong Kong between 1960 and 2000. Initially, the relevant technologies were installed and managed within the boundaries of large banks, such as HSBC. Over the course of this period, however, the industrial organization of the relevant technol...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inIEEE annals of the history of computing Vol. 38; no. 2; pp. 54 - 65
Main Authors Batiz-Lazo, Bernardo, Smith, Andrew
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Washington IEEE 01.04.2016
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
Subjects
Asia
Bank technology
Banking
cashless society
China
Computer literacy
History
history of banking
history of computing
Hong Kong
HSBC
Knowledge based systems
micropayments
Octopus
Retail banking
Retail industry
Standards organizations
Studies
Technological change
Technology adoption
Hong Kong China
China
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Summary:A dramatic change occurred in retail banking technology in Hong Kong between 1960 and 2000. Initially, the relevant technologies were installed and managed within the boundaries of large banks, such as HSBC. Over the course of this period, however, the industrial organization of the relevant technologies transformed to include provisions outsourced to nonbank institutions. This article seeks to account for this shift in the organization of computer technology. Specifically, the authors compare the adoption of computers at HSBC in the 1960s and 1970s with the Octopus micropayment system, which was developed in the 1990s by a consortium that excluded financial firms, thanks to the development (both in terms of depth and breadth) of an epistemic community of computer professionals and computer-literate managers in Hong Kong.
ISSN:1058-6180
1934-1547
DOI:10.1109/MAHC.2016.15