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Comment by sleet | Hacker News Reader

It amazes me that cheques are still used. I'm 36 and I've never issued a cheque, I think I was issued a cheque book with my first account but never used it.

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I've been going back to written checks lately because of huge timewasting problems with electronic billpay systems - problems like the bank says they transmitted the money go talk to the vendor. The vendor says they never got it, go talk to the bank. Around and around and around.

In the past, I'd wave around the cancelled check and resolve it quickly. With ebanking, it's hours and hours on the phone and sitting in the bank manager's office refusing to leave until they deal with it.

With that particular one, I eventually made the bank issue a "clawback" on the funds they transmitted. Wonder of wonders, this caused the vendor to find the money they'd received :-)

Sorry to hear your woes. Most inter-bank transfers are settled within the hour here. Overnight at most. Hopefully your systems improve.

I've never had a problem with Bank of America bill pay in the decade plus of using them. Never had to write a check in my life or have a checkbook. You just put in the name and address of who you want to pay, the amount, and BoA mails a check to them.

The payments clearinghouse in USA is in need of an upgrade but no one wants to pay for it or suffer any downtime or errors. Waiting up to three days is the reason why Paypal/Venmo, credit cards, cash and wire transfers are still so popular but these fast options can carry hefty fees. e.g. Credit cards skim 2% of businesses' revenue, ATMs can charge $3, and wire transfers are 25USD. Banks also benefit from the liquidity problems that can result - it's another reason to apply for credit or leave a larger cash reserve on deposit.

An upgrade is actually in progress. https://www.nacha.org/news/nacha-membership-approves-same-da...

I’m 29. I and many people I know have used checks several times over the past decade. It always surprises me when I read these stories on hn about how checks are dead, but this is not dissimilar to the mentality that self driving cars will be ready any day now.

Maybe this is how life is like in the Valley, but even so I doubt it’s the experience or thought process of the non-tech worker.

I just used a check this month to pay for my earnest money deposit for a house I’m buying. Before that, I’ve had to use either money order or personal check for the deposit and application fee of every apartment I’ve ever rented. Several landlords only accepted checks for the regular rent as well.

They weren’t slumlords (as some of the other commenters here assume), those who took only checks for rent were individuals who rented out a house or apartment building and took good care of it.

I’ve paid my gas bills with checks back when I lived with college roommates.

Checks aren’t as ubiquitous as they once were, but I remember in my life time, growing up, when they were ubiquitous.

I assume the person you are replying to is not American due to their spelling of "cheque."

The American banking system is still basically at the level of the horse and buggy. Inter-bank transfers are next to impossible.

Here in Australia, I can just give out my bank account number freely -- the worst you can do to me with that information is send me money.

Likewise in most if not all of Europe.

I _think_ you could set up a direct debit, for example: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7174760.stm although this was almost ten years ago, i think the protections are still the same.

FWIW, that's mostly a non-issue because of the Direct Debit guarantee:

> If an error is made in the payment of your Direct Debit, by the organisation or your bank or building society, you are entitled to a full and immediate refund of the amount paid from your bank or building society

https://www.directdebit.co.uk/DirectDebitExplained/pages/dir...

Inter-bank (wire) transfers aren't that hard. You just need to ask your bank to do it. Sometimes you have to come in person to do it, sometimes a faxed signature is all you need. I've always been slightly nervous about how easy it is in fact, since anybody can forge a signature and send a fax.

The big caveat is that the Fed likes to sit on the transfer for a day or two, or sometimes more. Very annoying if you are on a deadline for the money.

I'll write a check if charged a fee not to write one. A few years back, I lived in an apartment building that added the 3% processing fee if you paid by credit card and 1% to pay electronically from your checking account. I'd write a check and just drop it off when walking through the lobby. (They eventually dropped the charge for one's checking account.)

The only check I routinely write now is to the gas company. They use Western Union as their payment processing vendor and WU charges $2.95. It's petty, but it's easy enough to write a check.

Over the past 6 years, literally the only thing I've used my checkbook for was security deposit and first month's rent.

But my last two apartments required cashier's checks for both... so honestly, I don't expect to write another check my whole life.

Landlords only want cashier's checks if they don't trust you. If they don't trust you, they're less likely to rent to you. So requiring cashier's checks is uncommon, barring some extenuating circumstance like you've previously written a bad check or been late.

As a landlord, I always request cash or cashiers check for move in money. I don't want you living there for 3 months for free while I fight your bad check through the court system to get you evicted.

It may sound shocking, but some people will do this. Source: me, landlord since 2001.

Fair enough. My experience is I've been living in apartments for decades and never been asked for cash or cashier's checks.

Cashier's checks are frequently fraudulent. You've been lucky if they worked for you.

I use a credit card much more often these days, because the CC company takes fraud seriously. The banks don't. At least my bank did not.

>CC company takes fraud seriously.

On behalf of the cardholder they do. When a cardholder complains the card company just reverses the payment to the merchant in a 'chargeback', sometimes months later. Then the merchant has to appeal to get it back. So no the credit card companies don't care about fraud.

I would ask for cash...

Why not a bank transfer?

Tenant: "Reverse this payment from 6 weeks ago."

Bank: "Why?"

Tenant: "Well my landlord [tale of woe]."

Bank: "So I'm hearing that the payment was unauthorized."

Tenant: "Yes!"

Bank: "Reversed."

Landlord: "... YOU DID WHAT?!"

Bank: "sigh We don't want to be in this discussion."

Landlord: "YOU HAD ONE JOB!"

Bank: "It's not sitting between two adults trying to figure which of them screwed the other. We've got courts for that. Good luck."

In the US, bank transfers are reversible? (Here in Germany, if you sent the money it's basically gone, you can only reverse payments that the other side "pulled" from your account) Always interesting how the types of service available and their rules shape what's used where.

I was always asked for the deposit in cashier's check form, and I had a credit rating over 800 and a steady high paying job. It's a real hassle when you're new to the area and don't have the bank account moved over. Luckily convenience stores will write them for you but they charge for it.

I'm 51 and the last time I used a cheque was 32 years ago, so go figure... direct debit bank cards became common here in about 1985.

In the US, they're still a pretty standard way for individuals to pay each other or to settle accounts with service people. I don't write a lot but it's how I would square up with someone for a weekend trip or pay for my housekeeper or furnace servicing. I also "write" checks through my online banking but don't do those by hand.

Some banks allow customers to send cheques/checks printed by the bank, even on a schedule. This makes it easy for the bank customer to routinely pay predictable bills or send someone money on a schedule without having to go through the hassle of setting up direct deposit to their bank account (which is needlessly difficult even transferring money across two customers of the same bank, or across two banks in the same country). But the paper sent is far too revealing. The amount of information printed is remarkably high in order to do something that should be considered routine by now. And cashing or depositing still requires physically depositing paper somewhere like a bank teller's station or some ATMs. Remarkably few places will accept a picture and conduct the transaction from information gleaned from the picture.

That seems like a overly complicated workaround. The solution is to make the electronic banking work properly! Seriously how can that be?

I'm 36 too but I've issued hundreds of checks... and also issued some indirectly (Bank of America's bill payments issue paper checks to companies when they don't accept electronic payments)

Fair warning, I used to work for the company that makes BofA’s bill pay product, and it can have a mind of its own. Even payments that should always be electronic will sometimes decide to mail checks for reasons that you’ll never a get a good explanation for.

Fiserv?

Probably the big difference is that I live in New Zealand. We've had good electronic funds transfers systems for a long time.

They can be pretty handy. I don't have a physical checkbook and that causes problems for me once or twice a year. Typically when I am buying motorcycles. Those transactions tend to take place on weekends when my bank is closed and for amounts larger than my ATM cash withdrawal limit. They also tend to occur with parties that do not accept electronic payment methods.

I think the "parties not accepting electronic methods" bit is more surprising to people in places with more modern banking systems...

In Australia you can hardly buy anything anymore with ordinary cheques (you can still use a bank cheque for a car from a dealer or deposit on a house something, but that's the kind that you go to the bank, pay a fee and they print it out).

Hardly any private seller for a car or anything would ever take a cheque though - it's mostly always electronic. This year they're bringing in a real-time system (the current one is free overnight transfer to other banks and immediate for the same bank) which you can send people money immediately with just a mobile number.

The last motorcycle I bought I had to wait two days to go to a physical branch and get a (free!) cashiers check then go back to the shop to buy the bike. We made the deal on a Saturday and the guy asked for a check and I said "It's 2018, I don't have a checkbook" to which he chuckled but it wasn't clear what I would have used instead. Normally I would just carry cash but I don't make habit of holding on to that much cash. There are billpay methods I could use with my bank but they are not instant, anything instant would have cost something like 3% which on ~$5,000.00 is not feasible.

This is how it has always been (tm) here. It's interesting to hear about the glorious future that other countries have. How do you identify the account you are transferring to? I was technically interacting with a business, do they just give me a phone number/email and I use that?

I think my bank is working on a way to do instant transfers but I'm not sure how any of that works.

With BPay, you have a biller code (six character number) and a reference (which is longer, like 12 characters - usually this is like your customer number with that biller, so it doesn’t change). Generally every bill you get will have those details on them. It’s free which is nice.

For a regular transfer, you have a six digit number that identifies the bank/branch, and an account number (variable length, depends on branch). You just always use this method and your bank checks whether it’s a BSB at the same bank and does an instant transfer, and if not clears it through the central bank. I think batches run at 9am and 5pm every business day for that.

For those kind of payments, they’re bringing in two new things this year - a new real-time clearing system for small interbank transfers (that is, under like $100k or $250k or something - larger payments you have to use a special system called RTGS), and ‘PayID’ where you can have a mobile number for an individual or your Australian Business Number for a company, and I think internally it resolves back to the account number / BSB (I guess like a DNS system for banks).

Sounds like the case of a $5,000.00 motorcycle deal on Saturday afternoon still isn't handled "instantly" in the same way a check would be. At least not until the real-time system arrives.

I use checks (USA) for all my bills (including online payment they my bank where they mail the checks for me) because most places either do not accept credit cards or they charge an outrageous fee to accept credit. Lots of local businesses, especially contractors, cleaners, etc, either do not accept credit or highly resist it.

Do you still live with your parents or rent from a slum lord who only takes cash? Most landlords seem to only take cash or checks, it's really only the national apartment companies that take online payments.

My landlord takes Chase Quick Pay, which is really nice.

I live in New Zealand. Everything is done by electronic fund transfers. I have been a renter, now I'm a landlord. I have also run businesses.

Here in Australia I'm not even sure if my real estate agent would accept a cheque for rent at all - I'm pretty sure they told us from the outset that electronic payment was the only option they offer.

Australia, pretty much everyone accepts BPay which is an online direct payment system or direct bank to bank transfers. These both take < 3 business days

Even waiting one day is pretty poor when it comes to funds transfer times, let alone three!

It's a significant burden on commerce, businesses, and individuals to be without their funds for that long. And a big win for greedy banks who boost their balance sheets and profits by holding all those "in transit" funds.

In the UK, the "Faster" payment system, introduced about 10 years ago, means that the vast majority of bank-to-bank funds transfers are completed instantly.

What's fun is that last I looked the banks still didn't have any actual technology to support this feature. The rules they're obeying explain how the feature works for customers, but the implementation is left for them. And so their actual implementation is blind trust, settlement for the transactions happens at the old rate, hours or days later. The balance updates happen instantly for end users, but if any of the banks is engaged in fraud, that won't be detected until it's probably too late.

I expect this seems like a great cost-benefit trade, right up until a multi-billion fraud wipes out one of the banks, and then suddenly they'll be really excited about something better than "cross your fingers" as a resolution mechanic.

It'll be real-time with the New Payments Platform (NPP) being brought in this year.

BPay is only for bills and stuff - I'm sure my power company don't care that much that if I pay my bill on Friday night it doesn't clear until 9am on Monday morning... (it still counts as the bill being paid on Friday). It usually clears next day on business days anyway.

Also, the bank's balance sheets don't get a "boost" from holding payments. Deposits and other customer funds are strictly a liability to the bank (they owe them back to you), and they don't automatically get interest on them. So they don't have as much incentive as say a company does to pay invoices late to collect more interest.

In the UK this was all done by bank standing order; the landlords didn't want the inconvenience of handling cheques either.

It amazes me that one person thinks the environment they live in is how the entire rest of the world lives too.

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