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Comment by jdimov9 | Hacker News Reader

Although not 100% required, a lot of this applies to Europe and to the UK in particular.

What's a paper cheque?

It's important to note that all this is bank security. Someone else gaining access to your online bank account is a catastrophe, losing control of your Steam account is not. Not to mention your 9gag/genericSite accounts. I mean, nobody wants them anyway. Passwords could be optional for all I care.

The only accounts actually worth protecting are bank/government accounts, email and maybe Facebook.

In the US, banks are required to make you whole for personal accounts if you didn't authorize the transaction. Thus it's in the banks' interest to clamp down on the fraud.

Small-businesses need to watch out. They often have significant cash in accounts, are targeted because of that, and don't have the same legal protection.

  What's a paper cheque?

In some countries, banks give account holders books of banknote-sized paper 'cheques' or 'checks' - you can see pictures at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheque - they can use for making payments.

They have some convenient properties, but poor fraud protection. As such nowerdays they're mostly relegated to applications where fraud isn't a big worry.

For example charity donations, payments to friends and family, paying for little johnny's karate lessons, stuff like that. Some utility companies also allow you to pay by mailing in a cheque.

To add to that, cheques have unique properties that would be hard to replicate.

You can preemptively write cheques for future payments, like buying a car in two payments: one now and one in 3 months.

It also works for guarantee deposits, or write blank cheques with only the receiver filled in, etc.

Not legally - post-dated checks are illegal.

Even so, two parties who trust each other can use them without calling the police about it. (Actually a post-dated check is not so much illegal as it is invalid and therefore not intrinsically worth anything.)

I worked for a major company which operated in all 50 US states about ten years ago which paid me via post-dated checks. I had to wait a few days after receiving my check in the mail before I could deposit it.

They're legit in some countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-dated_cheque

Nope. For most U.S. Banks, post dated checks are immediately negotiable.

Few charities or small martial-arts businesses will trust a paper check. The possibility for fraud and nonpayment is too threatening to a small business to be worth it - they'd rather miss the sale than take payment in check.

I haven't seen a non-utility, non-bank business accept paper checks in about 13 years.

I volunteered as a treasurer of a (very) small non-profit org in the USA and in the last couple years I'd conservatively say I deposited many hundreds of checks, with two bounces. Perhaps 3/4 the total cash flow. Figure maybe $10K/yr worth of rather small checks. Generally people trust a check made out to "xyz" will end up in the "xyz" bank account better than just handing money to someone and hoping for the best. Also being a small org ALL our payments were done by me hand writing checks for expense reimbursements, various fees, rentals, etc. To minimize the appearance of impropriety, no cash payments were permitted, all documented and traceable check payments with the check number linked to transaction paperwork (reimbursement form, etc).

Most businesses get to pay for the privilege of having a business account and per transaction, as a volunteer org our banking expenses were zero, and all the competitors (square, paypal, various wallets, etc) all want a cut of the action, even if its small, so we had no interest.

A startup in the wallet business could get a lot of buzz and transactions by offering free service to all volunteer orgs / non profits. Even just temporarily for a year...

Capital One credit cards don't charge feed on charitable donations made through their website.

Why are martial arts special?

And why would a charity care about a bounced check?

I assume that was a response to the ancestor comment about "charity donations, payments to friends and family, paying for little johnny's karate lessons, stuff like that."

FWIW, personal checks for religious offerings seem to be common and accepted (at least accepted enough that I've seen them in offering plates in multiple churches, and I've never seen any church tell people that they'll reject personal checks), so I think you're right on that front.

Anecdotally, I pay for my music lessons with personal checks, and I paid rent in my SF apartment, to an individual landlord, with personal checks sent via USPS. In both cases there are reasonable means to complain if those checks bounce.

Biggest unique-ish uses for cheques -

- They can be mailed, unlike credit cards and cash

- They have no fees for either the sender or receiver

Of course you sacrifice convenience and security in exchange for no fees, which is why they are most commonly used for large transactions between trustworthy parties. For example, tax payments to the IRS.

> They have no fees for either the sender or receiver

Only in countries where checks are common.

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