3 ms·

What's the purpose of using checks, when other better options exist today? Is it just inertia for those folks?

• jfengel 3y ago
  In the US, I still end up sending and receiving checks a few times per year. My theater troupe gets paid by check, for example. We could probably set up some kind of direct transfer between their organization and mine, but I don't know how. Zelle, maybe? Checks have the advantage of no overhead. I don't have to pay transaction costs. That's not enormous, and the checks themselves require handling that costs my time, but it means that in a lot of cases it's just easier to do the thing that we already know how to do.
• hollerith 3y ago
  Before Covid (when he starting accepting payments through RentCafe.com) my landlord accepted only checks and money orders. (Checks are better because a money order basically required a trip to the store for each one.)
• JumpinJack_Cash 3y ago
  Cheques are cool! :) They are the only way for a regular individual to emit their own bonds or better yet a promissory note. Simply give your counterparty a post-dated cheque, if you have a good reputation you they'd give you the stuff immediately , and you have X days to find the money to put in your bank acount to satisfy their claim. In countries where a bounced cheque means jail time such as Bahrain and Kuwait a post-dated cheque is essentially the same as money provided that the beneficiary informations have NOT been filled out (it's the bearer who fills the stuff out) It's essentially a form of P2P lending which should not go away until we can do the same with bank wires (meaning setting up a bank wire transaction and give proof to our counterparty that we did so and that we cannot modify it). EDIT: Now all the crypto-bros will come out of the woodwork with smart contracts....to which I reply: ok , do it, don't just talk about it