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> Unbelievable that anyone still uses handwritten checks. Unbelievable that anyone has done so in the current century. There exist diverse alternatives both mor

by jjav 4y ago

> Unbelievable that anyone still uses handwritten checks. Unbelievable that anyone has done so in the current century. There exist diverse alternatives both more secure and easier to use and they have existed for many, many years. Can you tell us what these supposedly more secure alternatives are? At least in the US, I don't believe there is anything better at the end of the day. Credit cards can be more convenient, but not all places accept them and of the ones who do sometimes they charge an inordinate fee. All the private companies (paypal, venmo, etc) are out because it is well known they'll freeze your account without reason and without recourse. So if you need a secure mechanism, stay away from those. That leaves checks as the most universal, overhead-free and secure mechanism, other than plain cash but that's inconvenient for large amounts.

daveoc64 4y ago
>Credit cards can be more convenient, but not all places accept them and of the ones who do sometimes they charge an inordinate fee. Card acceptance is very high in the UK now, and fees for paying by credit or debit card have been illegal for a few years. Banks in the UK wanted to get rid of cheques because they're expensive to process, so the alternatives have really improved.
- jjav 4y ago
  > Card acceptance is very high in the UK now, and fees for paying by credit or debit card have been illegal for a few years. It's somewhat the opposite in the US. Many recurring payments can't be paid with credit cards (loans in particular, since they don't want you paying credit with credit). And many places, but government and municipal services in particular, charge extra fees for credit card use (I understand why, because it costs them more to accept a credit card, but I'm not interested in paying more so I give them a check to save money).
bigbacaloa 4y ago
Literally any alternative is more secure than a handwritten check which is the most easily forger financial document ever invented.
- jjav 4y ago
  Could you describe which alternatives (by name, more detail than "literally any") are more secure, and specifically against which exact threat model? Earliest in my career I worked with many banks developing cryptographic alternatives to check payments. Definitely a big culture clash between us from the crypto world (crypto = cryptography to be clear) who expected everything had to be mathematically secure and the banking teams who didn't care about any of that which seemed baffling to me. The misconception you express, shared by my younger self, is that the security of a check is somehow related to what's on the piece of paper. That's wrong. Everything on the piece of paper is right there in cleartext trivially reproducible by anyone. Nobody pretends it has any security, it doesn't need any. The security of the checking system is in the process and the laws and verifications fine tuned over more than a century of resisting attacks. So turns out it works very well. A battle hardened system that can't be matched by any "move fast break things" fintech startup. Not concidentally, this is very analogous to the cryptocurrency world which thought all finance regulation was nonsense and are now collapsing with fraud every which way. Turns out all that regulation (at least most of it) has been written from the experience of centuries of financial fraud and has good reasons.

by jjav 4y ago

daveoc64 4y ago

>Credit cards can be more convenient, but not all places accept them and of the ones who do sometimes they charge an inordinate fee. Card acceptance is very high in the UK now, and fees for paying by credit or debit card have been illegal for a few years. Banks in the UK wanted to get rid of cheques because they're expensive to process, so the alternatives have really improved.

jjav 4y ago
> Card acceptance is very high in the UK now, and fees for paying by credit or debit card have been illegal for a few years. It's somewhat the opposite in the US. Many recurring payments can't be paid with credit cards (loans in particular, since they don't want you paying credit with credit). And many places, but government and municipal services in particular, charge extra fees for credit card use (I understand why, because it costs them more to accept a credit card, but I'm not interested in paying more so I give them a check to save money).

bigbacaloa 4y ago

Literally any alternative is more secure than a handwritten check which is the most easily forger financial document ever invented.

jjav 4y ago
Could you describe which alternatives (by name, more detail than "literally any") are more secure, and specifically against which exact threat model? Earliest in my career I worked with many banks developing cryptographic alternatives to check payments. Definitely a big culture clash between us from the crypto world (crypto = cryptography to be clear) who expected everything had to be mathematically secure and the banking teams who didn't care about any of that which seemed baffling to me. The misconception you express, shared by my younger self, is that the security of a check is somehow related to what's on the piece of paper. That's wrong. Everything on the piece of paper is right there in cleartext trivially reproducible by anyone. Nobody pretends it has any security, it doesn't need any. The security of the checking system is in the process and the laws and verifications fine tuned over more than a century of resisting attacks. So turns out it works very well. A battle hardened system that can't be matched by any "move fast break things" fintech startup. Not concidentally, this is very analogous to the cryptocurrency world which thought all finance regulation was nonsense and are now collapsing with fraud every which way. Turns out all that regulation (at least most of it) has been written from the experience of centuries of financial fraud and has good reasons.