In Digital We Trust: The Computerisation of Retail Finance in Western Europe and North America

This paper tells of the contents of a forthcoming volume, which offers a new and original approach to the study of technological change in retail finance. Most business history studies of businesses for the last 50 years note the emergence of computers and computer applications, but they do not analyze their role in shaping business practices and organizations. In this book we look directly at the processes of mechanisation and computerisation of retail financial services, throughout the 20th Century while articulating an international comparison. We bring together young, well established and independent historians, who come from different traditions (that is, economic, business, accounting, geography and political histories as well as historians of technology). Contributors look at stand alone and comparative case studies from different parts of the world (namely Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Mexico and the USA). The outcome is a rich survey of the broad literature examining different aspects of the technological and business histories of retail financial markets from a variety of perspectives