Word: viewtron
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...grabber: "Futuristic way of living arrives in South Florida... Bank at midnight from your living room." When Physician Alfred Damus of Coral Gables, Fla., ran across the announcement one day last week in the morning paper, his imagination went to work. With a system called Viewtron, the doctor and his wife Leatrice could monitor their bank accounts, pay bills, keep track of their stock portfolio and perform other financial tasks simply by tapping the buttons on a notebook-size keyboard. Later that morning his wife spent $600 for the Viewtron machine being advertised at a nearby Burdines department store...
Seven years and $26 million in the making, Viewtron made its debut in southeastern Florida last week as the first two-way home information system available in the U.S. The Knight-Ridder newspaper chain, operator of Viewtron, plans to introduce the system within about two years in 17 cities, including Boston, Detroit and Seattle. One of Viewtron's starring attractions, banking at home, presages a revolution in consumer finance. A sci-fi concept only five years ago, home banking is now being introduced by institutions ranging from New York City's Chemical Bank (deposits: $29.8 billion) to Washington...
Bankers believe that financial services will eventually be part of futuristic home information packages like Viewtron that supply everything from recipes to movie reviews. Therefore they are scrambling to organize joint ventures with communications firms. Four aggressive regional banks, Florida's Southeast, Ohio's Bane One, North Carolina's Wachovia and California's Security Pacific, have banded together to develop the financial services for Viewtron. Next spring some 20 institutions, including Milwaukee's First Wisconsin National Bank and Seattle's Peoples Bank, will team up with Automatic Data Processing and the Times Mirror communications...
Despite the convenience, home banking is still running into some serious customer resistance. Many consumers seem reluctant to buy the machines to hook up to the central computer systems unless they can find other uses for them. Viewtron's Sceptre terminal, for example, is available during the Florida introduction for $600 but later will cost $900. For the same money, customers can buy a home computer that can do more complex tasks like word processing. Moreover, after the initial expense, Viewtron customers pay a basic fee of $12 a month plus a $1-an-hour charge to the phone...
Nonetheless, many experts believe the new technology will be successful because it will be such a boon for middle-class consumers who have neither the time for banking errands nor the luxury of a personal accountant. Said George Kagan, a Miami lawyer, after seeing a Viewtron demonstration last week: "This intrigues me. I can see in five years looking back and saying, 'How did we do without this?'" If enough consumers agree with Kagan, the table-top teller could become the hottest home appliance since the Cuisinart. -By Stephen Koepp. Reported by Marilyn Alva/Miami and Frederick Ungeheuer/New York
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