Credit card sales

[Leo Enticknap]

I think over here, the cheque essentially died a quiet death over 35 years ago. While most of the "civilized worlds" including quite a bunch of "shithole countries" (not my words) have moved over to IBAN, money in the U.S. is still seemingly distributed by horse drawn carriages: I can wire a bazillion euros in a few seconds and a single mouse click to some random guy living in a hut in rural Africa, but paying a friend in the U.S. still makes a root canal treatment look good...

That death was beginning to take place when I immigrated to the US fourteen years ago, but accelerated notably during and since covid. Mailing and physically handing over checks was commonplace in the early teens: paying property tax, the lady who looks in on our cats while we're on vacation, etc. etc. was all done that way. Though it was uncommon, I still regularly saw people writing checks at the supermarket checkout lane, and one chain even had an accessory on the cash register whereby the customer would hand over a blank check, the machine would print all the details except the signature onto it, and the customer would then simply sign it.

What motivated me to abandon checks was an incident in 2020 in which one I mailed to the State of California to pay a tax bill was stolen from the mail, and the details on it used to create and issue a bunch of phony ones in my name. Thankfully, our credit union caught all of them and bounced them, but in the aftermath of that I had to change my account number (and thus all the direct deposit arrangements with third parties associated with it) and do hours of bureaucracy. There is now only one regular transaction a year I do using paper checks, because the recipient doesn't accept credit cards or PayPal and I don't want to increase my security exposure by signing up for one of the online payment platforms that she does accept. Assuming that things stay that way, I will only need to order more check books if I live to 126!

[Harold Hallikainen]

I do a lot of routine billpaying through our credit union's online bill pay service. They do electronic transfers for most bills, but print and mail checks for some. I still print checks out of QuickBooks for our dog groomer since they charge another 4% for credit card payments. I do the bookkeeping for three nonprofits and most payments are done by printing checks. I receive checks for my contract work and deposit them into the credit union with the camera on my phone.

I've never heard of the machine Leo mentions that fills out the check for you. That must have been an interesting machine due to varying check size and layout.

Most in-person transactions are done with a credit card, including at the movie theater. Each transaction goes into QuickBooks and is reconciled when the statement shows up. I like the traceability of the transactions.

I did a Google AI discussion on credit cards, fees, where the fees go, etc. It's at https://share.google/aimode/DtFptYvgqC6nhHtnX . One interesting (to me) is how the cost of accepting credit card payments compares with the cost of accepting cash.

[Frank Cox]

The Coop grocery store here does automatic cheque filling out too. You can just sign a cheque and hand it to the cashier, she feeds it into the machine and it prints the date, payee and the amount on the cheque.

They've been doing that for at least thirty years, so it's not new. Most people pay with their credit or debit card now, I don't think they get many cheques outside of a few old ladies.

[Mark Ogden]

Recently here in New York City, an old and popular cinema went to credit card only, for walk-up admissions and concessions. To skirt around the state "must accept cash" mandate, they have what is essentially a "reverse ATM" in the lobby where you insert cash and it spits out a card which you then bring to the stand. The problem is that it only takes bills, so if your dog, nachos and Coke comes out to, say, $14.25, you have to put $15 on the card, leaving 75 cents for the house. Granted, the card is reloadable, but specific only to that theater. If you only go there once in a blue moon, you've pretty much granted them a de-facto surcharge, which they are NOT supposed to have. It's infuriating to me, but more and more common. In fact, the whole thing started here with Van Leeuwen's, a chain of high-end la-dee-dah (but really tasty) ice cream shops. The owners were such dicks about "no cash" that the city hauled them into court and fined them, resulting in the cash-machine compromise. I don't know if employee theft is the issue in these places, or if the're just trying to hip 'n high-tech, but for those of us who hate to pull out their cards for small purchases, it's annoying.

[Mike Blakesley]

We still have about 3 or 4 customers who always write a check. They are all in their 70s.

I pay a good share of bills by check still. It's just way less work. Program the check into Quickbooks and when it prints, sign and send. That's way more efficient (and less prone for errors) than going to a bill-pay website, typing in the amount, clicking "Pay" plus a few more confirmation clicks, THEN going to Quickbooks and entering the check manually, and then deleting the 'confirmation' email. Using Quickbooks directly also makes it easier to verify if a bill has really been paid.

I suppose I like that system better because I'm .... approaching my 70s.

[Frank Cox]

I pay (almost) everything for the theatre by EFT through my bank's website. There's no danger of a cheque disappearing (which has happened a few times over the years) and the bank's transaction fee is less than the cost of a stamp. And the outfit I'm paying gets their money sooner.

I still give the Pepsi driver a cheque, though, and a (very) few other outfits that don't want EFTs for some reason.

I've never understood why EFT payments aren't instant. It's just bits on someone's computer; it should be transferred immediately. The payments always seem to reach the recipient the following day. Still faster than the post office, though.

I suppose I like that system better because I'm .... approaching my 70s.

Yeah. *cough* Me too. Sigh...

[Marcel Birgelen]

I've never understood why EFT payments aren't instant. It's just bits on someone's computer; it should be transferred immediately. The payments always seem to reach the recipient the following day. Still faster than the post office, though.

Because money that's in transit is the best kind of money for the bank and they'll keep it in transit as long as they can. It's nothing technical... As long as the money is in transit, the bank can do essentially anything they please with it. It's called "float".

If you want faster transfers, you need new rules and regulations.