Checks are still useful. When adulting you have to pay bills to the government, various taxes and fees. Unfortunately (yay privatization 😡) in order to accept online payments there are more than a few government agencies that have contracted with private vendors to take electronic payment. Of course this saves tax money so the government doesn’t have to expend IT resources to create a site to do this, especially in smaller municipalities, but it also generates leech middlemen who use their position to extract fees for the convenience of allowing you to pay a bill online. Fuck those businesses.
So the old process of writing a check, finding an envelope and stamp and sending it via regular post is better than giving some shitty leech company a fee for taking money from you and handing it to the agency.
In the USA specifically. A lot of other countries have gotten rid of them (or are close to getting rid of them). Try to give someone a check in Australia and they’ll just laugh at you.
extract fees for the convenience of allowing you to pay a bill online.
You just need a credit card with a higher cashback rate than the fees.
I thought I was being smart this way, then realized my bank charged me about $2/cheque when I bought a book of them, but only 1.50 for an interac transfer…
Checks are still useful. When adulting you have to pay bills to the government, various taxes and fees. Unfortunately (yay privatization 😡) in order to accept online payments there are more than a few government agencies that have contracted with private vendors to take electronic payment. Of course this saves tax money so the government doesn’t have to expend IT resources to create a site to do this, especially in smaller municipalities, but it also generates leech middlemen who use their position to extract fees for the convenience of allowing you to pay a bill online. Fuck those businesses.
So the old process of writing a check, finding an envelope and stamp and sending it via regular post is better than giving some shitty leech company a fee for taking money from you and handing it to the agency.
In the USA specifically. A lot of other countries have gotten rid of them (or are close to getting rid of them). Try to give someone a check in Australia and they’ll just laugh at you.
You just need a credit card with a higher cashback rate than the fees.
This exactly. I still write checks to my lawn care guy because Yardbook has a credit card convenience fee.
I thought I was being smart this way, then realized my bank charged me about $2/cheque when I bought a book of them, but only 1.50 for an interac transfer…
$2 a check? You need a different bank.