The postal service has recently been a victim of a lot of theft targeting checks. People are willing to rob postal workers at gunpoint for their box key. Then, thieves sift through all the letters for a chance of finding a check.
Worse, they have ways of “washing” the check to turn it into a blank check, and reuse it with a new amount and recipient.
I’m almost 50 years old and I’ve never used a check in my entire life.
What is this old timey bullshit? Why not a burlap sack of fucking pieces of eight?
I’m almost 50 years old and I’ve never used a check in my entire life.
How is this possible? How did you pay your bills before online billpay systems - did you pay them all by phone?
I’m in my early 40s and still use checks now and then.
I used bank deposits. First through the mail, then through electronic-but-not-Internet payment systems and finally online and mobile banking. Also bank authorizations.
Checks were never big here, but they had been phased out completely in the 00s. I haven’t actually seen one since the nineties. I have never owned a check book.
What’s paying by “bank deposit”? In the US that term simply means putting money in your bank.
Like how did you pay the water bill that way?
In ye old days I would fill out a slip of paper and mail it to the bank.
Deposit is probably the wrong word. It’s more a transfer order? Deposit is what came up when I translated my local term, but it’s not like I stuffed cash in an envelope or anything.
Then the bank would pay whoever (electric, water) ?
Yeah, it’s an order to take money out of my account and put it in someone else’s. The number on it tells the recipient what bill it’s supposed to pay.
They looked like this:
https://www.vvponline.nl/nieuws/acceptgiro-blijft-langer-bestaan
This is funny, my son works at a printing place that prints, among other things, checks. And they apparently make a LOT of checks. He’s 25 and was confused why so many people need checks.
The fewer places print checks, the more each one is busy. Also probably still very common for businesses.
This. I can tell you from a banking standpoint we were ordering FAR fewer registers and other check stuff over the years and before I left they had reduced the amount we even could order to like 10 books per order, so not at lot and old ladies would come take them all.
Yes, my wife and my employers both pay using checks as well as printed invoices after direct deposits.
My entire family uses checks to pay each other. I’m not going to Venmo my dad $15,000. And his back doesn’t let me transfer funds to him for since idiotic reason.
Man, I would never pay rent or a mortgage payment with a deposit. I did that once, and they claimed I didn’t pay several times, and I had no receipt. I had to pay my bank $20 to provide proof of deposit (several times) Fuck that. Also fuck US Bank.
I don’t know about that guy but you can’t even get cheque books in NZ anymore. They were phased out, mostly because electronic payments are ubiquitous and most places already stopped accepting cheques a decade or two back.
How is this possible? How did you pay your bills before online billpay systems - did you pay them all by phone?
We had something called an ‘acceptgiro’, it was basically a pre-filled money transfer order. Usually the amount, beneficiary and some reference number were pre-printed. All you had to do was sign it and mail it to the bank (which usually was free, you had pre-paid envelopes from the bank). It was usually attached to the bill, basically a tear-off part of the bill that you signed, stuffed into an envelope and mailed.
For recurring payments you usually give the other party ongoing permission to directly take it from your account. This is still extremely common and how I pay 99.999% of my bills. For things like mortgages, rent and insurance it’s usually required to pay in this way. Basically, my monthly bills get paid without me even having to think about it.
Country is probably a factor, they’ve been basically extinct in the UK for 2 decades
This is the answer. Here in this US checks are still widely used, and sometimes, thanks to processing fees, the only payment except cash someone will accept. Mobile payments, though available, haven’t really taken off here like in Europe.
He must have been homeless his entire adult life.
I’m mid 40s and didn’t get a credit card until I was 25. And I couldn’t even pay for any utilities, rent or car payments with it. And still can’t. Online bill pay wasn’t a thing until like after the recession.
It’s mainly in the USA it seems. In South Africa, we have had internet banking since 1995. So businesses stopped using checks around that time. Phone banking with DTMF was popular around that time as well. Bank transfers we used more than checks for businesses before then.
For individuals, debit cards became the default around the same time. Same functionality as a credit card, without the credit.
Then Internet banking became mainstream for individuals around the 2000s when everyone got access to the internet on their phones.
Cash remained popular throughout since ATM infrastructure was very good in South Africa.
Americans once again making shit more complicated than it needs to be. Most of the world has moved on from cheques to wire transfers, deposits, etc. all done through online banking.
Every transaction is tracked and accounted for. No need for this bullshit.
I’m American, and all of this stuff happens automatically and digitally after I set up any new account. I’m not sure how writing a check would be easier.
Some banks still offer the transitional system I remember where they do it on your behalf, so once you have all your payees, you can go in every month and put in the amounts for each bill, and they mail a check from the bank to each place.
I am french, I use cheques , I also use wire transfers and many other bank option but I hope more place would accept my cheque. Also cheque transaction are tracjed and accounted just like others.
Why is everyone calling them checks? Are we all talking about cheques? I am confused.
It’s just the American spelling.
Because online bank accounts never get hacked, and old demented folks never fall for phishing emails… right?
Thats what the 2fa for most transfers is for.
What does it even mean “one less account to track?” The money is still coming from a bank account, if you track the money in your account you would still have to account for a check, and it would be even worse if the check isn’t cashed right away.
Is it that you don’t have the monthly credit card bill if you send a check? But you’re spending the same amount of money regardless, checks are more like one-off credit card transactions, that don’t confirm payment like a credit card does. Checks are worse for the payment-neurotic. That’s maybe an argument for debit cards, it’s not an argument for checks.
…Does anyone have data on how many people still use checks?
My old appt charged a $17 fee for paying online, check is free. We still wrote checks until recently.
Definitely this. There are utilities here with 5% service charges for paying online. I’d rather pay by check
Also, most all US small to mid sized business transactions are by check.
I’m not going to take a suitcase with over $10,000 to the city to pay a permit fee, or $50,000 Venmo to pay a business partner.
Unless you are in the marijuana industry, then you have to…
Also, most all US small to mid sized business transactions are by check.
Why? It is a bank transfer with extra steps. A check can get unreadable, get lost… No one in Germany would write a check for a permit fee or to pay a business partner. You pay online. Fast, safe, can’t get lost, easy to proof what, when to whom you have paid for years to come. And the transfer won’t get through if you do not have money on your account or are allowed to overdraw, while you can write whatever you want on a check and then run.
It is not cash or check it is bank transfer or check and the bank transfer is the safer, faster option. All they do at a bank is to scan the check and to turn it into the exact same bank transfer it could have been in the first place. All you do is adding a layer of risk by writing on a piece of paper.
I find that really funny, because many Germans still refuse to buy their groceries without cash, many like me do not own a credit card only debit cards, but no one younger than 90 uses a check. I am 58 years old and have never owned checks.
I don’t know what to tell you, but I work in business in the US and work in invoicing in the construction industry.
Everything is done via paper, full stop.
Bank transfers do not generate invoices, full stop. Company to company payments are made using a PO or check. Nothing else, in my experience, are accepted.
These are for amounts of $1 to tens of millions of $$$.
If it’s any indication… the last time I ordered checks their website was littered with nuisance upsell popups that significantly hindered that task (felt kinda like Indiana Jones navigating booby traps), so I think the “check industry” (if that is a thing?) is getting desperate.
A check has your checking account number on it. Please don’t write checks. Use cash.
Cash has a globally unique identifiable number on it for tracing. Please use the barter system.
yeah hold on let me just barter with my convience store for some food
Your digestive system can remove the number
Checks? Cash? What year is this?
I think the last time I cashed a cheque my elderly mum wrote it. Had no idea before that people even still had cheque books after 2002 or something, but fortunately I didn’t have to find if there was a branch of my bank left within fifty miles because you can scan them in the app and pretend the other person sent you money in a normal way.
Password Manager
There will be lots of a useless accounts you have to make in life. Scale yourself. Many such accounts will not be optional. At least this one provides you with some value.
Hard why not both? You should use a password manager & create less accounts on platforms or sharing your phone/email if you can help it.
Sure, in general yes. But in reference to the comment, writing a check they would already have my name address and some reference to my bank account details even without the online account, which implies a high degree of trust.
If I need an account to read an article on a website? Then I’m not interested in reading your article.
I’m old school, if I want to buy something, I go to the store with the ability to essentially examine the item, pay for it in cash and go home. Crating an account and paying with the card, with which also the bank knows what I had bought? WTF, capitalism surveillance shit.
I mean… The account exists if you log into it or not. You still need to keep track of it so that you’re paying into the correct account, and so that you know how much to pay.
Only you now have to talk to a person if you need to check or change anything.
Not the account for the random hotel or restaurant. “Pay with the O’Burger app!” “Collect 425 SkyPoints with a Platinum Membership!”
You don’t need an online account to buy food at a grocery, but if you had one I guarantee they’d spam the heck out of you, alongside whatever else they might do with your data.
