The AIIM Blog - Overcoming Information Chaos

Paper vs. Electronic Transactions: How Far We've Come

Written by John Mancini | Mar 10, 2011 2:48:07 PM

AIIM Board member John Chickering, always on the prowl for interesting information, spotted some data from the Federal Reserve that illustrates just how far we have come in the world of paperless transactions.

Over the past decade, we've gone from a 58%/42% paper/paperless split in the volume of electronic transactions to 24%/76%. Quite an amazing shift in such a short period of time. Almost 80 billion electronic transactions in 2009, up from less than 30 billion at the beginning of the decade.

The only thing that amazes me is that there are still so many checks out there, demonstrating the cultural resistance of any process to paperless, no how compelling the value proposition. I can't even remember the last time I wrote an actual check. But apparently, there are still some of you out there.

Here's the raw data:

How Check, ACH, Credit Card, and Debit Card Transactions Compare


Paper vs. Electronic Transactions by Year

What examples do you have from the processes near and dear to you? Any data you are willing to share from your own processes about the disappearance of paper?