Colin W Kingsbury wrote:
wrote in message
oups.com...

The check operations that I'm familiar with used to haul checks
around towns within a state. These generally used smaller piston
powered GA aircraft.


There you have it. With a half dozen banks slowly taking the whole
industry over you're going from a point-to-point operation to a
hub-and-spoke one. Paper checks- just one more piece of the old world
that our grandkids will find impossible to believe ever existed.

Let's say, the rest of the world finds it impossible to believe, that paper
checks are still being used today in an industrialized country.

Standard personal checks have been replaced by Euro-Checks some 25 or 30
years ago in Europe. However nobody would even think about paying his phone,
dentist, mortgage, power, or whatever bill with a check. It's all electronic
transfer via direct deposit or automated withdrawel, even between private
people.
During maybe 15 years I probably used less than 10 checks total, mostly for
one-time larger purchases.

I was outright flabbergasted when 8 years ago I came to the motherland of
capitalism, working for one of the worlds largest high-tech(!) companies,
and I would get a piece of paper printed with funny numbers instead of money
in my bank account.
The small company where my father worked back in Germany introduced direct
deposit for all their employees somewhere in the mid 60th of the last
century. And believe me, that company was anything but progressive.

And two(?) years ago even the paper Euro check for ad-hoc purchases was
buried and now you only have something similar to direct debit, just with
the same guarantees and security as the former paper Euro check.

This paleozoic banking system of the US of A is nothing but a job guarantee
for the postal service and a permanent annoyance for anyone who has to pay a
bill.

jue

jue