Check your email for the verification code we just sent you.

I’m almost 50 years old and I’ve never used a check in my entire life.
What is this old timey bullshit? Why not a burlap sack of fucking pieces of eight?
- 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.
  
  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.
  
  Country is probably a factor, they've been basically extinct in the UK for 2 decades
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  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.
- Never? I hate the things, but 25 years ago it was the only option.

Password Manager
There will be lots of a useless accounts you have to make in life. Scale yourself. Many such accounts will not be optional. At least this one provides you with some value.
- Hard why not both? You should use a password manager & create less accounts on platforms or sharing your phone/email if you can help it.
  
  Sure, in general yes. But in reference to the comment, writing a check they would already have my name address and some reference to my bank account details even without the online account, which implies a high degree of trust.
  If I need an account to read an article on a website? Then I’m not interested in reading your article.
- Password managers are good; but keeping track of passwords is not the main problem with making online accounts for everything.
  
  Every account need a valid mail direction, ofte als with 2FA a phone number, both pretty easy to track in the network. Every website know your ISP, your public IP, your OS and a lot of other data which they can store and sell it to third parties for commercial reasons. Never create an account if it is not essential for you.

A check has your checking account number on it. Please don't write checks. Use cash.
- Cash has a globally unique identifiable number on it for tracing. Please use the barter system.
  
  Cash has an identifier on it, but unlike a check that identifier doesn't identify you.
  
  yeah hold on let me just barter with my convience store for some food
  
  Your digestive system can remove the number
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3InUXuiTZk8
- Checks? Cash? What year is this?
  
  Welcome to dystopia 2024 hellhole edition. We've got mail theft, check fraud, genocide and fascism. 🤠

Americans once again making shit more complicated than it needs to be. Most of the world has moved on from cheques to wire transfers, deposits, etc. all done through online banking.
Every transaction is tracked and accounted for. No need for this bullshit.
- Why is everyone calling them checks? Are we all talking about cheques? I am confused.
  
  It's just the American spelling.
- I'm American, and all of this stuff happens automatically and digitally after I set up any new account. I'm not sure how writing a check would be easier.
  Some banks still offer the transitional system I remember where they do it on your behalf, so once you have all your payees, you can go in every month and put in the amounts for each bill, and they mail a check from the bank to each place.
- Because online bank accounts never get hacked, and old demented folks never fall for phishing emails... right?
  
  Thats what the 2fa for most transfers is for.

...Does anyone have data on how many people still use checks?
- My old appt charged a $17 fee for paying online, check is free. We still wrote checks until recently.
  
  Definitely this. There are utilities here with 5% service charges for paying online. I'd rather pay by check
  
  I had an apartment that switched payment processor that jacked up my credit card fee well above my cash back (prob cuz people like me ended up saving like 10/mo), so I just switched to bank issued checks that they send for me.
  Using the checkbook I got 20 years ago is just a massive pain in the ass.
- If it's any indication... the last time I ordered checks their website was littered with nuisance upsell popups that significantly hindered that task (felt kinda like Indiana Jones navigating booby traps), so I think the "check industry" (if that is a thing?) is getting desperate.
- 0 in my country. They were abolished many years ago
- I use them all the time for contractors and architects. Nothing else ....

I mean... The account exists if you log into it or not. You still need to keep track of it so that you're paying into the correct account, and so that you know how much to pay.
Only you now have to talk to a person if you need to check or change anything.
- Not the account for the random hotel or restaurant. "Pay with the O'Burger app!" "Collect 425 SkyPoints with a Platinum Membership!"
  You don't need an online account to buy food at a grocery, but if you had one I guarantee they'd spam the heck out of you, alongside whatever else they might do with your data.
  
  I assumed this was in the context of paying recurring bills rather than shopping. Agree with you about stuff like groceries.

I'm old school, if I want to buy something, I go to the store with the ability to essentially examine the item, pay for it in cash and go home. Crating an account and paying with the card, with which also the bank knows what I had bought? WTF, capitalism surveillance shit.

What does it even mean "one less account to track?" The money is still coming from a bank account, if you track the money in your account you would still have to account for a check, and it would be even worse if the check isn't cashed right away.
Is it that you don't have the monthly credit card bill if you send a check? But you're spending the same amount of money regardless, checks are more like one-off credit card transactions, that don't confirm payment like a credit card does. Checks are worse for the payment-neurotic. That's maybe an argument for debit cards, it's not an argument for checks.

The postal service has recently been a victim of a lot of theft targeting checks. People are willing to rob postal workers at gunpoint for their box key. Then, thieves sift through all the letters for a chance of finding a check.
Worse, they have ways of “washing” the check to turn it into a blank check, and reuse it with a new amount and recipient.

I think the last time I cashed a cheque my elderly mum wrote it. Had no idea before that people even still had cheque books after 2002 or something, but fortunately I didn’t have to find if there was a branch of my bank left within fifty miles because you can scan them in the app and pretend the other person sent you money in a normal way.
- I'm the same way. But since I've been having to handle my elderly relative's estate I've had to write a ton of checks. The clerk of court requires the use of checks to pay bills for the estate. The estate account was issued a debit card but the bank said I couldn't use it because of the same requirement.
- In France it's quite regular and quite useful IMO (I'm from sweden where you can't pay a bus ticked with cash, nor a credit card... and checks were like abolished in the nineties) paying school stuff, sport inscriptions etc.
  Additional bonus, you can split a payment and ask for it to be cashed in over time, without needing some nank taking a cut.

Cash anyone?
- It's usually a bad idea to mail cash.
- You can over $5000 in cash with you at all times???
  
  What are you buying that's $5,000? Seriously, wtf?

Okay, boomer

Option 3: make my bank write checks for me

Okay Boomer.
- fellas is it old-fashioned to not want more unnecessary tracking ?
  
  A check has the same information as a basic account. Any sane company is probably storing it in the same backend too.

Hm, seems legit
- 🔒Verified secure ✅
  
  I had doubts until I saw that. Very reassuring!

a check? ok bye, ive never understood what the fuck that shit should do… like what about cash or just a simple transfer? why do people use checks?
- I've never used a check in my life. I can't imagine who would accept one in my country.

Whoooosh. I don't get it.
- Paying online, not playing.
  
  I think my problem is understanding the third panel.

i feel kinda stupid. what do checks and online gaming accounts have to do with each other? do they accept checks as payment for access?
Edit. Wow me, just wow. Playing = paying
- Paying online, not playing online. I misread it at first too.
- It got me too.

Or just use a password manager

I think checks are a thing of only American past. Can’t think of anywhere else where they used checks so frequently. While they existed, they were the exception

I keep all my bills organized in bookmarks. Keep track of their due dates on a Google Sheets budget. I'm not going back to checks..lol
- Do you guys not have direct debit? All my bills are paid automatically. Manually paying my bills sounds like a pain and I would definitely forget/double pay if I needed to do it that way
  
  We do. I never give companies power to pull money from my account. I realize it's a convenience for some people in the way they budget, so no judging.... I've just been screwed by it one too many times. I keep full control over my finances. I budget everything out on an Excel template I created. It actually doesn't take much time at all ..an hour or so once a week to get everything balanced and paid for the month.
  
  US banks won't even issue chip and pin cards because their customers would find entering a 4 number code too arduous and complicated.

What? The only payments I make that could take checks are my bills and it's not like I wouldn't have to keep track of those just because I'm paying by check. I don't understand this at all.
- Yeah, I know this artist has gotten a lot of shit in the past for little reason, but this is truly an absurd take.
- Pretty sure they mean one less account someone could track you with, because yeah, staying on top of sending monthly checks for stuff is something I'm very glad I don't have to do anymore. My credit took multiple hits in my younger days from bills I forgot to pay on time.

I still have a checkbook for the occasional handy man that doesn't want cash or transfer. I'm pretty sure most apps take a cut from business accounts, and others will report to the IRS when you make a certain amount, so for some workers it makes sense to avoid the apps.
Zelle is somehow the one that is usually free and does not report, but my credit union has a daily limit for Zelle transfers, so if the bill is larger, I offer payment in check as an alternative to cash since it's safer.