A while back I was talking with someone from a first world country not the US.
I was trying to explain to her that in the US, it’s pretty common to just write some random bullshit on a little piece of paper and hand it to someone, basically a slightly formalized version of the big suitcase full of IOUs from “Dumb and Dumber,” and that they would accept it as a form of payment and then hand it to their bank and it was the bank’s job to sort it all out.
She was scoffing at the entire concept, like what the fuck do you guys use cups and strings for your phone service too? She was just baffled by the idea. Like what if there’s not enough money in the account? Or someone takes someone else’s little pieces of paper, or just prints out their own? And I said yeah that happens sometimes, it’s not a real robust system. But you do have to write your names on the checks, and someone who has no idea what your handwriting looks like checks it, so you know, there’s authentication built in at least.
In this along with many other ways, she was very surprised by the US, like what the fuck I thought you guys had your shit together. I said no, we do not.
Honestly that makes a good bit more sense to explain why it’s lasted this long. And, my guess is that the processing fees are lower than credit cards which is probably nice. But yeah, at some point you and your customers gotta agree to enter the 1990s era of payment technology.
A while back I was talking with someone from a first world country not the US.
I was trying to explain to her that in the US, it’s pretty common to just write some random bullshit on a little piece of paper and hand it to someone, basically a slightly formalized version of the big suitcase full of IOUs from “Dumb and Dumber,” and that they would accept it as a form of payment and then hand it to their bank and it was the bank’s job to sort it all out.
She was scoffing at the entire concept, like what the fuck do you guys use cups and strings for your phone service too? She was just baffled by the idea. Like what if there’s not enough money in the account? Or someone takes someone else’s little pieces of paper, or just prints out their own? And I said yeah that happens sometimes, it’s not a real robust system. But you do have to write your names on the checks, and someone who has no idea what your handwriting looks like checks it, so you know, there’s authentication built in at least.
In this along with many other ways, she was very surprised by the US, like what the fuck I thought you guys had your shit together. I said no, we do not.
Checks are generally ran at the register. Businesses don’t take them trusting that they’ll pay later
Honestly that makes a good bit more sense to explain why it’s lasted this long. And, my guess is that the processing fees are lower than credit cards which is probably nice. But yeah, at some point you and your customers gotta agree to enter the 1990s era of payment technology.
Checks are processed exactly the same as debit cards since about 2008 with Check21.
The difference is the store or bank don’t (doesn’t?) have to retain copies of checks when you use a debit card.