• klemptor@startrek.website
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    6 months ago

    I’m almost 50 years old and I’ve never used a check in my entire life.

    How is this possible? How did you pay your bills before online billpay systems - did you pay them all by phone?

    I’m in my early 40s and still use checks now and then.

    • vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      6 months ago

      I used bank deposits. First through the mail, then through electronic-but-not-Internet payment systems and finally online and mobile banking. Also bank authorizations.

      Checks were never big here, but they had been phased out completely in the 00s. I haven’t actually seen one since the nineties. I have never owned a check book.

      • DoctorWhookah@sh.itjust.works
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        6 months ago

        This is funny, my son works at a printing place that prints, among other things, checks. And they apparently make a LOT of checks. He’s 25 and was confused why so many people need checks.

        • xia@lemmy.sdf.orgOP
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          6 months ago

          The fewer places print checks, the more each one is busy. Also probably still very common for businesses.

          • JokeDeity@lemm.ee
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            6 months ago

            This. I can tell you from a banking standpoint we were ordering FAR fewer registers and other check stuff over the years and before I left they had reduced the amount we even could order to like 10 books per order, so not at lot and old ladies would come take them all.

          • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
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            6 months ago

            Yes, my wife and my employers both pay using checks as well as printed invoices after direct deposits.

            My entire family uses checks to pay each other. I’m not going to Venmo my dad $15,000. And his back doesn’t let me transfer funds to him for since idiotic reason.

      • Crashumbc@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        What’s paying by “bank deposit”? In the US that term simply means putting money in your bank.

        Like how did you pay the water bill that way?

      • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
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        6 months ago

        Man, I would never pay rent or a mortgage payment with a deposit. I did that once, and they claimed I didn’t pay several times, and I had no receipt. I had to pay my bank $20 to provide proof of deposit (several times) Fuck that. Also fuck US Bank.

        • vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          6 months ago

          I probably messed up the translation. I mean a kind of bank account to bank account transfer order.

      • folekaule@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        This is the answer. Here in this US checks are still widely used, and sometimes, thanks to processing fees, the only payment except cash someone will accept. Mobile payments, though available, haven’t really taken off here like in Europe.

    • Dave@lemmy.nz
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      6 months ago

      I don’t know about that guy but you can’t even get cheque books in NZ anymore. They were phased out, mostly because electronic payments are ubiquitous and most places already stopped accepting cheques a decade or two back.

    • BorgDrone@lemmy.one
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      6 months ago

      How is this possible? How did you pay your bills before online billpay systems - did you pay them all by phone?

      We had something called an ‘acceptgiro’, it was basically a pre-filled money transfer order. Usually the amount, beneficiary and some reference number were pre-printed. All you had to do was sign it and mail it to the bank (which usually was free, you had pre-paid envelopes from the bank). It was usually attached to the bill, basically a tear-off part of the bill that you signed, stuffed into an envelope and mailed.

      For recurring payments you usually give the other party ongoing permission to directly take it from your account. This is still extremely common and how I pay 99.999% of my bills. For things like mortgages, rent and insurance it’s usually required to pay in this way. Basically, my monthly bills get paid without me even having to think about it.

    • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      He must have been homeless his entire adult life.

      I’m mid 40s and didn’t get a credit card until I was 25. And I couldn’t even pay for any utilities, rent or car payments with it. And still can’t. Online bill pay wasn’t a thing until like after the recession.

      • SapphironZA@sh.itjust.works
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        6 months ago

        It’s mainly in the USA it seems. In South Africa, we have had internet banking since 1995. So businesses stopped using checks around that time. Phone banking with DTMF was popular around that time as well. Bank transfers we used more than checks for businesses before then.

        For individuals, debit cards became the default around the same time. Same functionality as a credit card, without the credit.

        Then Internet banking became mainstream for individuals around the 2000s when everyone got access to the internet on their phones.

        Cash remained popular throughout since ATM infrastructure was very good in South Africa.