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Today's Trend: "The Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act," or "Check 21," is designed to shorten the amount of time checks written on personal accounts take to clear," explains Find/SVP analyst Mark Broderick, but while this is a boon to businesses, it may negatively impact many consumers.

Why: Banks successfully lobbied to be able to take advantage of imaging technologies to assure same-day processing of checks, but "many people live from paycheck to paycheck and rely on the 'float' that will no longer be passed on to them," notes analyst Elizabeth Rowe. With banks protecting their own clearing-time float, while ending their customers', more banking transactions will be driven outside the bank branch and into the hands of check cashers.

Opportunity: The Consumers Union was concerned enough to launch an unsuccessful campaign to have banks instituting Check 21 protocols waive overdraft fees for a limited period, so it is now focusing its energies on reciprocity--faster clearance of checks deposited by consumers. Currently, only 3% of banks have implemented Check 21 programs, but Wachovia (nyse: WB - news - people ), for example, estimates that 70% of its banking transactions will involve image-based clearances by 2007. In anticipation of wider adoption, financial technology service companies such as Clearing House Payments, Fiserv (nasdaq: FISV - news - people ), Fidelity National (nyse: FNF - news - people ) and Metavante are retooling their platforms; though Broderick says it will be a while before they can expect the changes to be profitable. "Banks need to feel responsibly toward these at-risk populations," notes Rowe. And this would be enlightened self-interest if nothing else, since a Synergistics survey notes that the most-affected group will be the 18 to 34 segment that every marketer wants to hang onto.

Challenges: The market is moving more slowly than anticipated, but once in place, Check 21 implementation could easily alienate clients and blunt sell-through opportunities for the banks.

Companies To Watch: Wachovia and Bank of America (nyse: BAC - news - people ). Both are making themselves the guinea pigs for the new systems

Fiserv, Fidelity National, Metavante, Jack Henry & Associates (nasdaq: JKHY - news - people ). These leading core-processing vendors will chart the path for their industry in retooling platforms.