Introduction
In this dynamic world, the role of Banks, whether in a developed or developing economy consists of financial intermediation, provision of an efficient payment system and serving as conduit for the implementation of monetary policies, it has been postulated that if these functions are efficiently carried out, the economy would be able to mobilize meaningful level of savings and channel these funds in an efficient and effective manner to ensure that no viable project is frustrated due to lack of funds.
The role of banks in economic development has been richly articulated in literatures. Pioneer contribution of Schumpeter (1934) was of the view that financial institutions are necessary conditions for economic development. This view has been variously corroborated by other scholars such as Goldsmith (1969), Cameron et at (1972) and Patrick (1966).
Valentine and Mason (1997:1), in the bid to throw more light on how the banking sector exhibit or justify their strength of necessity and importance, said that it is an established fact that banking consists of three basic functions namely; the acceptance of deposits from customers, the transfer of these deposits from one account to another and the lending of money by way of loan or overdraft to customers. By this daily deposits accepted are credited and money withdrawn is debited.
An efficient manual accounting system has been in use before the use of computer came into place. Customers deposit money with banks either with the use of cheque or passbooks (for the operators of the current and savings account respectively).
Account operators issue cheques to people, instructing the bank to pay a named person a specific sum of money on their behalf. When the branch of each bank receives the cheque, they had to authorize payment of the amount and also debit the customers account. This arrangement was satisfactory when the daily number of cheques and their users were relatively very small. The system began to break down when a larger number of people started making use of the banking services. This made the manual system of keeping customers account an increasingly difficult and expensive task.
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