LAS VEGAS — Is the future of person-to-person payments forfinancial institutions to charge users fees – or will the serviceproduce plentiful results without any fees at all to members? Rightthere was a crucial difference in thinking among panelists at theBAI Payments Connect conference which opened Monday in LasVegas.

The setting: a packed room, standing room only, for a paneltitled: “Person to Person Payments: An Established Product That'sEvolving.”

On one side: Sanjeev Dheer, president of the CashEdge division at Fiserv. By his thinking, users will gladlypay for the convenience of handling small and incidental chargeswith easy to use online tools.

On the other side: Arkady Fridman, financial innovationsbusiness development manager at PayPal who said, firstly, financialinstitutions would be saving money by not having to process paperchecks and, beyond that, they will benefit by gaining visibilityinto transactions that had been opaque because cash wasexchanged.

“This is much more valuable than fee income,” said Fridman.

Note, however, PayPal wants to collect fees onconsumer-to-business transactions. Where it appears to want no feesis in true person-to-person.

Who is right?

The one fact – agreed to by all panelists – is that P2Premains very early stage. And how it will shape up is way too earlyto call. But now the battle lines are getting drawn.