This talk explores the critical changes pushing consumers into the world of electronic transactions - improved technologies, better security, and consumers' growing experience with card-based and other electronic transaction technologies. These changes will not only affect customer behaviors, but will transform the distribution chain, bring in new players, force the current players to fundamentally transform the way they conduct business, and encourage policy makers to find the right balance of regulation and market forces.

Combined, these impacts will change the basic relationship between businesses and their customers forever. Only the stakeholders who are prepared for such changes will carve out their place in the new world.

Greg directs IFTF's long-term forecasting and strategic planning efforts in both the public and private sectors. He has been Director of IFTF's Corporate Associates Program (CAP) since its inception in 1976 and is also the overall editor of CAP's Ten-Year Forecast. Greg has overseen projects for many Fortune 500 companies, including those in the financial services, high technology, consumer products, professional services, and healthcare industries. As an economist, historian, and policy analyst, Greg uses a variety of research and planning techniques to work with clients in exploring strategic choices. His most recent book is Future Tense: The Business Realities of the Next Ten Years (William Morrow, 1994) with Ian Morrison. Before joining IFTF Greg headed a research division of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. A graduate of Yale, Greg received his Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University.