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Comment by teruakohatu | Hacker News Reader

It is surprising that in the day and age of online/phone banking so much money is transferred via. the post office. Postal orders have stopped being used in many other countries. My country (NZ) stopped them in 1986.

In New Zealand every few months another bank stops issuing and accepting checks.

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Some people in the U.S. don't have bank accounts and may need to pay a bill.

More like many. About 6.5% of US households do not have a bank account. There's also the concept of the "under-banked", which covers people who have them but still use non-bank fiscal implements such as payday loans and money orders. That number is about 19% of US households.

https://www.fdic.gov/householdsurvey/

Poor people have no problem paying in cash for most services.

When an organization does a lot of business using money orders that's a red flag that it's an organization so in the wrong, so terrible, that it can't trust its employees not to skim cash and look the other way when they see each other skim cash.

It shouldn’t, the US is a backwards country for retail banking. Patriot act made it much more difficult for people outside of the mainstream.

It’s really difficult to bank as a poor person. Post offices are everywhere with reasonable fees.

Not everyone in the US has a checking account or a credit/debit card - banks are picky if you are poor, for many people this is the only way they can pay bills by mail

Given the increasing number of unbanked individuals, I don't find it surprising at all. Also, you cannot accidentally overdraft a money order.

Money orders have many advantages over checks. You don't have to wait for someone to fill them out. Since they are printed when you buy them, you don't have to worry about people filling the check out wrong. Money orders clear in a pre-determined amount of time, checks take forever. You don't have to fill out deposit slips for checks.

They're just a pain in the ass.

Are checks still a thing in the US?

Yes, I only use a few of them a year. I bought a box of 500 of them back in 2006 or so and still have 2 unopened packages of them.

I pay my bills online but I've needed a check for things like government fees where they don't take credit cards (or charge a fee), paying the company who fixed my roof, etc. I've also gotten certified checks for things like a house downpayment.

Yes. Rent is usually paid via check, and they're still useful when interacting with some government agencies via the mail.

Even for online bill pay, checks are still very much a thing. Payments to big financial institutions, like credit card and mortgage payments, usually go electronically and are more or less instant. But not everyone is set up to receive electronic payments -- when I pay my property taxes or dentist using online bill pay, my bank just prints out and mails them a paper check, and it takes a week for them to receive it!

Well, the money orders sold at Walmart and the USPS do require you to fill out your and the recipient's information. The amount of money is pre-printed.

It is surprising that in the day and age of online/phone banking so much money is transferred via. the post office

When the lights go out, when the internet stops, cash, checks, and money orders still work.

My country (NZ) stopped them in 1986.

Considering the number of earthquakes in New Zealand, I'd think that having multiple forms of redundant payment would be a benefit. I've been through enough natural disasters to know that putting all of one's money into one form of payment is a really bad idea.

We still use cash, just not checks or money orders.

Modern mobile infrastructure is quite resilient against earthquakes. Towers are backed by generators and mobile phones have batteries. Payment terminals here are often mobile (3g) connected and contain batteries.

I've seen plenty of cell phone towers knocked over or disabled by earthquakes. And in emergencies, cell infrastructure is often gridlocked.

Maybe it's fine for NZ, but I have yet to go through a hurricane or tornado where the mobile networks didn't crumble. I've seen and read about blizzards, floods and sandstorms halting communications networks.

Western Union had 300 full service money transfer locations, as of 2018.

https://www.westernunion.com/nz/en/home.html

In respond to your comment on checks: Do a quick search on HN for "cashless" and you'll turn up a whole lot of reasons to have something other than credit cards. Even you Kiwis don't want that.

American banking is surprisingly backwards to outsiders... I went last year and PayPass was like magic to the 7-11 attendant in SF. Transferring money between banks has been a non-trivial issue in America.

If a 7-Eleven clerk is your sample size, you might be surprised what they consider to be magic.

The land of the rent-seeking.

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