Brief history of financial innovations in Venezuela and the world.

The opening process of the world economies has produced an accelerated technological progress a relatively short period of time. The development of electronic commerce constitutes an important foundation of this process. Within this technological progress financial innovations, defined as the development of new products and services based on technological advances for banks and other financial institutions, have played an important role. Among the new products that constitutes these financial innovations are credit cards, debit cards and ATMs, electronic checks, virtual money, and so on, being virtual money a possible future substitute for cash. These financial innovations have positively impacted the development of financial transactions because these have allowed enhance efficiency, increase rapidness, and expand the access to great diversification of financial mechanisms and instruments that permit executing transactions faster and more comfortably.