ARLINGTON, Va. — Slowly and surely the ATM industry in the U.S. is building the infrastructure and developing the technology it will need to completely handle and clear paper checks electronically, in the hope that eventually financial institutions and consumers will want to use it.

"Last year the big news was the roll out of the check imaging ATMs that could take a member's check and print the image on the receipt," said Jim Hanisch, an executive vice president with CO-OP Financial Services, a cooperative that has taken a leading role in the check imaging development. "Now we are starting to see credit unions and banks deploy those machines and consumers start using them and we need to finish up the network side."

Hanisch favors the analogy of check imaging to the early automobile industry in the U.S. When the Ford Company started manufacturing the first cars, there were relatively few paved roads in the country suitable for them, but the manufacturer made them anyway because he was convinced that as they became more popular the roads would be built.