Could America's Paper Checks Be On the Way Out, Like the Penny? (cnn.com)
- Reference: 0180314361
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/12/06/1853227/could-americas-paper-checks-be-on-the-way-out-like-the-penny
- Source link: https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/05/economy/fed-considers-ending-paper-checks
> When the U.S. Mint [3]stopped making pennies last month for the first time in 238 years, it drew a lot of attention. But there have been quiet moves to stop using paper checks as well. The government [4]stopped sending out most paper checks to recipients as of the end of September, part of an effort to fully modernize federal benefits payments. And on Thursday the Federal Reserve [5]put out a notice that suggested it is considering — but only considering — the "winding down" of checking services it now provides for banks.
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> The central bank's statement said that as an alternative to winding down those services, it is mulling more investment in its check processing services, but noted that would come at a higher cost. But it is also considering not making any such investments, in order to keep costs roughly unchanged. That would lead to reduced reliability of those services going forward. "Over time, check use has steadily declined, digital payment methods have grown in availability and use, and check fraud has risen," said the notice from the Fed. "Also, the Reserve Banks will need to make substantial investments in their check infrastructure to continue providing the same level of check services going forward."
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> [6]A report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta in June found that as of last year, more than 90% of surveyed consumers said they prefer to use something other than a check for paying bills, and just 6% paid by check. That's a sharp drop from the 18% of bills paid by checks as recently as 2017. Consumers also reported they view checks as second-worst for convenience and speed of payment, ahead of only money orders. And they're ranked as the least secure form of any payment other than cash.
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> But even if it's true that options such as direct deposit, automatic bill paying and electronic payment systems such as Venmo, PayPal and Zelle have all reduced the need for traditional checks, paper checks are still an important part of the payment system. They make up about 5% of transactions and represent 21% of the value of all those payments, according to a statement from Michelle Bowman, the Fed's vice chair for supervision, who dissented from the Fed's Thursday statement.
[1] https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/11/12/1849239/us-ends-penny-making-run-after-more-than-230-years
[2] https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/05/economy/fed-considers-ending-paper-checks
[3] https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/12/business/last-penny-minted
[4] https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/04/business/social-security-paper-checks
[5] https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/other20251204b.htm
[6] https://www.atlantafed.org/blogs/take-on-payments/2025/06/02/by-the-numbers-decline-in-consumers-use-of-paper-checks
Holup (Score:2)
I know we often make jokes about America and their cheques (especially their spelling of it), but at some point in the past decade I thought it had been relegated to just that, a joke. I hear nothing but talk about credit cards and cash lovers, I actually thought cheques disappeared. Are they still a thing? It's been legit 3 decades since I've seen a cheque book.
Re: (Score:2)
Are they still a thing?
Yes, for people over 80 and some businesses.
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I actually had to write a paper check recently. Took me 30 minutes to find my darn checkbook.
Still useful. (Score:2)
> Are they still a thing? Yes, for people over 80 and some businesses.
Start paying closer attention to all of your credit/debit processing fees.
Found my local water company charging almost $4 for processing my debit card. Looked on their website and found the local office. Found they accepted payment there. Started paying by check via the mail. Stamp is a lot cheaper. Never once had an issue.
Book of 100 checks is probably ten bucks. You can also get a sheet of three checks printed at your bank, often for free.
Payroll checks are still a thing in small biz (Score:2)
In my experience at my last three jobs (in the midwestern USA), small businesses that don't have enough employees in an area have to print and mail paper payroll checks instead of paying their employees through direct deposit.
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Why wouldn't they just outsource payroll to someone who can do direct deposits? I ran a small business in Canada for about 19 years and I used a company called Ceridian to handle payroll. It handled tax calculations, government remittances, etc. and it only cost me around $45 per pay for 12 employees... a real bargain.
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Why wouldn't they just outsource payroll to someone who can do direct deposits?
What the summary left out is that 6% of the US is "unbanked" and has nowhere to direct a deposit. And "That unbanked percentage rises to 22% for those with an income below $25,000." - [1]CNN [cnn.com] So it may not have much impact on your world, but this would seriously impact those who can least afford it.
In addition, Cashier's Checks are arguably the best/easiest way to physically transfer large amounts of money safely between ind
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/05/economy/fed-considers-ending-paper-checks
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Why don't they outsource? The answer is: Why pay $45 for a job that you can do yourself.
When I had employees I added up their timecards and calculated the payroll and the deductions, and wrote each person a cheque. I knew exactly how much everyone was getting, I immediately saw any irregularities and could investigate them. And it didn't cost me $45.
Re: Holup (Score:5, Insightful)
Credit card processing fees are high in the US, typically 2.5% . Merchants prefer to use less costly payment methods. Unfortunately, for instant payments, there is no standard for electronic payments, just a patchwork of various systems or businesses like Zelle, FedNow, Venmo PayPal. You just never know which merchant or customer has which. Whereas almost everyone has a debit or credit card. I still write a ton of checks for this reason. Not because I like them, but because of the fragmentation of electronic payment methods, and because many businesses prefer them. Obviously, not at checkout lines.
If credit card fees were lower, as they are in the EU, I think checks would likely disappear.
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The crazy thing is that a check is basically just a direct transfer between bank accounts done inconveniently. If you do the transfer by typing the information into a computer, you get charged a fee. But if you do it by writing the information on a piece of paper and then taking a photo of it, then it's free. This makes no sense, but that's how it works.
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I agree, it is crazy. And checks certainly are not instant. But laws around check fraud are pretty strict. People actually go to jail for it. With credit card fraud, the banks typically take a loss, and might not involve law enforcement for small amounts. The 2.5% processing fees more than cover their losses. So, the cost is just passed on to merchant and consumers.
Re: Holup (Score:5, Informative)
We still write a small number of checks a year in cases where the payee is small and doesn't do electronic payments or because they use a service which adds a fee. Our property tax and car tags have three percent plus a fixed fee. A locksmith I used this year used a service that had a $25 fee. I recently wrote one to the contractor for some home repairs.
When we still had kids in school, checks were the way to pay tuition and fees.
Give me a choice between a check and a three percent fee and I will write you a check. But sometimes a debit card has no fee and that's the choice before a check.
I pay cash for gas because it has a twenty cents a gallon discount versus a card.
The goal is saving my money. I'll pick the option with the lowest fee even with a bit of friction.
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> I pay cash for gas because it has a twenty cents a gallon discount versus a card.
Might be a regional thing, but here in central Florida the gas stations offering "cash discounts" are often still priced higher than other stations that don't play those silly games.
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I saved 4% on having my car repainted by writing a check for the bill vs. using a card. Fees are added to credit and debit card payments which businesses sometimes pass on to the customer.
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The only way for me to pay local taxes is via check. They might accept a post office money order but I never tried.
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Yes, they are still a thing. I used one last month to pay the dentist. The month before that I had to pay the property taxes. They accept cash, check, and postal money order.
Next month I'll be paying the IRS, car registration, and insurance. For the once or twice a year payments it's still better than yet another username and password, and credit cards get hacked every other year at most.
Re: Holup (Score:2)
The difficulty is that when you need them, you need them.
Money through the mail, money when online services aren't available, backups when AWS goes out, or the Internet is out in the region, etc, etc.
They provide an exact amount and an alternative when other methods fail.
Personal check (Score:2)
A personal check is physical proof you paid for something, so yup, they have to go. I still pay local bills with checks. A cancelled check has saved my bacon several times.
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If you pay online, the confirmation page has a transaction number you can write down if you're worried about needing to prove that you have paid. And if you pay with a credit card, that's recorded on your credit card statement. I don't think I've paid with a cheque in years and there has never been an issue. And (at least in Canada) banks don't send back cancelled personal cheques anyway. All they do is provide an image and give you 90 days to download it. If you actually want the cancelled cheque back
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Who's "confirmation page"? What portal? How do I know it can be trusted to prove payment? What laws and case law are there around that?
It's great that you don't care, but lits of people do. There is no valid alternative to using checkes for a lot of things right now. No, "Zelle" and other third parties are not valid alternatives.
Other coutnries have figured this out a long time ago. Interback transfers from phones backed by law and consumer protections. That's where things need to be at a minimu
Australia (Score:2)
We run a medium size business and I’ve not seen a cheque in the last 5 years and prob 2 in the last 10.
Australia has a national system called BPAY and now PayID and will formally end the use of cheques by 2030.
USA has a much more fragmented financial system making change much slower and more painful.
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Never had a cheque book since the 90s. I paid a bank cheque several years ago on a home deposit because my BPAY-linked account blocked payments over a grand.
When the final settlement came a month later, I was back at the same bank branch for one of the few transactions I've done over the counter in the last 20 years.
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I'm in the United States. I still write a few paper checks a year, mostly to friends and neighbors. It makes it easy to pay my neighbor for some yardwork they do for me.
I think the killer app that would move me away from paper checks would be a "universal" (at least in the US, but for the entire US) app that would let me authorize transfers funds to other people and businesses. Something maybe like CashApp, but that every person and every business and utility uses. Right now, it feels like every person
I still write about 15 checks a year... (Score:4, Interesting)
For what you ask?
For Christmas Presents to staff in my building, postman, etc.
All I need is their name. I can write it out ahead of time, put it in an envelope, write their name on the envelope and hand it to them in person. No one needs to know how much till they open the envelope. I can give out multiple ones to multiple people all privately.
But that is it. That is the only thing I do it for.
If my building were to set up a website to let me do this, I would probably stop writing checks. Give the postman cash.
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Seems like an effort for the mailman to cash it.
Why wouldn't you just put a couple of Andrew Jacksons in the envelope?
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> Seems like an effort for the mailman to cash it.
Many mobile banking apps allow checks to be deposited digitally now. Just endorse it, then snap a photo of the front and back and no trip to the bank is necessary.
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Letter carriers are not supposed to accept cash or checks.
[1]https://news.usps.com/2024/12/... [usps.com]
Gift cards for restaurants are usually a better option.
[1] https://news.usps.com/2024/12/03/as-the-holidays-near-heres-a-reminder-about-gifts/
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$50 would be bargain. Some outfit called "Paychex" (sic) charged my wife $100 for writing a fucking check.
Not going to happen anytime soon (Score:4, Insightful)
For the same reason fax machines are still standard equipment for much of the government, law firms and many other places. They could use email but they don't.
It's too easy and they refuse to change.
Most checks today are rarely 'written' like the old days. My monthly bank payments are electronic, but a few don't have bank account destinations, so it gets done via the bank's paper check service.
I also prefer checks over credit cards because I don't want Visa getting any of my money.
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> I also prefer checks over credit cards because I don't want Visa getting any of my money.
Technically those fees are paid by the merchants, though a recent settlement with MasterCard and VISA may change things a bit.
[1]Visa, MasterCard reach $38 billion swipe fee settlement, draw opposition [reuters.com]
[1] https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/visa-mastercard-reach-revised-swipe-fee-settlement-with-merchants-2025-11-10/
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It is not because they "refuse to change" it's because the laws, regulations and case law around their use cases are not clear or compatible with anything else. This is risk mitigation.
The vast majority of faxes being sent are inbox to inbox with a third party on both sides doing a ridiculous didgital to analog back to digital using voip over the internet then shoving the "fax" into email. Nobody wants that expense if it's not necessary. It still is.
Checks are the same thing. There are no good alte
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> For the same reason fax machines are still standard equipment for much of the government, law firms and many other places. They could use email but they don't.
> It's too easy and they refuse to change.
Uh, too easy?
I’m picturing the lowly employee forced to drive into an office to physically retrieve a dead-tree hours-old fax off ‘ol Faxy McFaxface, who was unfortunately struck and killed by a street sweeper upon exiting the ass end of an outdated office policy that had the balls to send an untimely death notice via email.
You know, email. That newfangled dial-up era tech that now alerts you immediately upon receiving. From the comfort of your own shitter. At 5AM. And not a street sweeper
I still write the occasional check (Score:4, Interesting)
I probably mail out 3 or 4 checks every month, mostly to utilities that want to charge me a "convenience fee" to pay online. Fuck them; I'll gladly pay the $0.70 or so first class postage if it means I make their lives a bit more difficult.
Bill pay uses checks (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't write much in the way of checks any more- less than one a year. However, I do lots of billpay, which sends out a couple dozen checks a year on my behalf. I suspect this is not uncommon, and until the Fed sets up a "no-cost" alternative that has the same convenience and security as the existing check system, we're stuck printing out these little slips of paper.
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Even though I'm not American I do some business in the USA and have an American bank account for that purpose.
I pay bills through the bank's website. They need the payee's name and mailing address.
They print and mail a cheque to whoever I tell them to pay.
When I first got that account it seemed odd since I make the payment through the bank's website, but that's really how they do it. They put a cheque in the mail.
It's going out, very slowly (Score:2)
I deal with maybe 30 checks a year, written and received. I used to deal with 600+. It took some effort to find a reasonably priced ACH payment processor, but once I did, I never looked back. That said, those 30 checks are usually checks for multiple reasons.
Two this week (Score:2)
I have to write two this week.
First time in a long time I have written any though.
I still use checks. (Score:3)
They have their uses. For instance, my property management company tried to add a small fee for paying our rent with an online check, where as prior they didn't. I decided, fine, I'll write a check out and drop it through the mail slot. I want to say it was a flat $2 fee, but on general principle I said nope. I suspect numerous people did this, as within 6 months they went back to letting us pay online for free with an online check.
My next landlord is a family friend and they (boomer) are fine with check for the rent.
It's just one more option. Instead of sending a gift card in the mail, I'll send the same as a check instead. Many banks let you do mobile deposit with their app. This way no gift card fraud issues, no stolen gift cards and also no stolen cash. Only one person can cash the check. That's a win win.
The cheque is in the mail (Score:2)
Cheques are for paying bills. Not everybody has a payment portal web page set up, especially contractors.
And should be spelled that way because there are other sorts of checks in this country, including an affirmative mark (also called a tick)
The comparison with 1 cent and 5 cent coins is invalid. Small coins have become irrelevent due to inflation, with a cheque you can add another zero before the decimal point.
Yes, I was born in a country that s[eaks English.
Seriously? (Score:3)
Does the US still use cheques? Wow. New Zealand is way ahead, we have this system called EFTPOS which means you can buy things using a card, but no fees attached. Like a debit card, only no transaction charges.
Re: (Score:1)
EFTPOS — Electronic Funds Transfer at Point Of Sale, introduced in 1985. I suppose it's easier to change things in a smaller country such as NZ.
service fees (Score:1)
I'll be writing more checks this year than last for utilities, as different organizations start passing along the credit card service fees.
Those credit card companies have quite a nice scam going, here in the US. I gather it's better in other places, which is hardly surprising.
Checks are great (Score:2)
There are still places I write out checks because I get a discount for doing it.
Re:Don't be that boomer (Score:5, Insightful)
Almost as bad as the people who try to get their iPhone payment app running.
Re: (Score:3)
> Almost as bad as the people who try to get their iPhone payment app running.
Or you could blame the store. Basically, every modern smartphone is capable of being your own personal self-checkout terminal, but only some stores have actually bothered to implement such functionality into their apps. So, it's the store that's making you go through a convoluted checkout process where you're stuck behind someone futzing around to get their payment method to work.
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I had to do that the other day. New phone, transferred everything from my old one, re-unlocked my card in Google Wallet, my phone told me my card was now ready for use. The following day when I went to use it for the first time there was a second process I had to go through via my bank's app, and even after that, I had to try five or six times before the card was accepted. ;(
Luckily there wasn't a queue.
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Buying groceries with a check?! Look at this rich guy. The rest of us have to fill out a credit application and take out a mortgage when we want to buy a Christmas roast.