Remind me why we still have cheques in our banking system?
Because cash doesn't leave a paper trail and not everyone can accept cards.
And third point necessary here: because U.S. banks don't have any other reasonable inter-bank transfer system.
A Man Walks into a Bank
141–150 of 184 posts
Re: A Man Walks into a Bank
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're going through that much technological effort, why still use paper cheques ?
Because it doesn't require the other person to use anything technological.
Other than a bank or cheque cashing service, anyway...
The niche seems pretty small: payments too large for cash, too small for certified bank drafts, to people taking too few payments to have technologying up make sense.
Re: A Man Walks into a Bank
#143It amazes me everytime, that in the US day-to-day banking still consists mostly of writing, sending and cashing cheques. In germany (I dont know about the rest of Europe, but I guess the situation is similar), cheques are virtually non existent. You can still get and cash them, but you will get weird looks from the person behind the bank counter, most of the time there will be a hefty fee associated with it(I once ca…
Checks don't exist in Japan for the most part either.
On the other hand, rent in Japan is usually paid by bank transfer at $6 per transaction (done at the ATM or online). Checks, in the USA, are free, no transaction fee
Re: A Man Walks into a Bank
#144Heh, a check in 1995 you say. Ok, hear this. This year 2 guys here in Warsaw put a bag full of newspaper into a cash deposit and walked away with 1.5 million Euro on their account. By 'their' account I mean an account set up on a fake or some bum who gave them their ID for a few hundred. Supposedly they had an insider who thought them how to build trust on the account, so after some time the deposits are cashed in be…
Sorry, sounds completely made up. Have any sources?
Re: A Man Walks into a Bank
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's free, personal money transfer that you can cancel if someone steals. What's not to like?
The multiple-day clearing process? The need to transfer a physical item to transfer a couple of numbers?
Do you have a better solution? Also, many banks now allow cashing photos of checks.
Re: A Man Walks into a Bank
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
The multiple-day clearing process? The need to transfer a physical item to transfer a couple of numbers?
Do you have a better solution? Also, many banks now allow cashing photos of checks.
> Do you have a better solution?
I don't personally, but there's lots of accounts in these comments about systems in other countries that have free or nearly free near-instant wire transfers provided bank account number and name. Charities soliciting donations include their account number in ads. If you don't have a bank account you can make a deposit into the account at the post office. It doesn't get much simpler.
> Also, many banks now allow cashing photos of checks.
Yeah, but until you can "sign" an image of a cheque and email it to the recipient - and I'm not sure if that'd be technically a valid legal cheque in the U.S. - a physical copy must exist at some point.
Re: A Man Walks into a Bank
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
As far as I know, there are just 2 things preventing fraudulent checks: 1. Obscurity : Someone has to know your account number and routing code. 2. ... Ah, make that just one thing preventing fraudulent checks. It's scary. Any legitimate check, for any amount contains enough information to create a fraudulent check to drain a bank account.
This is why Knuth has stopped writing cheques, incidentally: "Nowadays almost everybody knows that it's dangerous to reveal your credit card number, or to have that full number on a printed document that somebody might find in the trash. Soon people will learn that it is equally dangerous to reveal the numbers that are printed in plain sight on every check. Forget signatures; banks have no time to verify them. The on…
A friend of mine had $3m stolen by his business partner who simply wrote out $500k cheques and took them to the bank. The bank oked the cheques despite knowing that he had no signing authority.
Once it all came to light, the bank then sued my friend and drove him into bankruptcy.
Fuck banks
Re: A Man Walks into a Bank
#148Heh, a check in 1995 you say. Ok, hear this. This year 2 guys here in Warsaw put a bag full of newspaper into a cash deposit and walked away with 1.5 million Euro on their account. By 'their' account I mean an account set up on a fake or some bum who gave them their ID for a few hundred. Supposedly they had an insider who thought them how to build trust on the account, so after some time the deposits are cashed in be…
Sorry, sounds completely made up. Have any sources?
http://www.tvnwarszawa.pl/informacje,news,pociety-papier-war...
In a nutshell: a guy had setup a corporate bank account, which at this particular bank enabled him to use a "nightly dropbox" in which you declare amount of money, then put it in a bag and put it in the dropbox. These bags are not scanned before your account is credited (I know, it's insane), so guy just withdrawed the money and dissapeared.
Re: A Man Walks into a Bank
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is why Knuth has stopped writing cheques, incidentally: "Nowadays almost everybody knows that it's dangerous to reveal your credit card number, or to have that full number on a printed document that somebody might find in the trash. Soon people will learn that it is equally dangerous to reveal the numbers that are printed in plain sight on every check. Forget signatures; banks have no time to verify them. The on…
A friend of mine had $3m stolen by his business partner who simply wrote out $500k cheques and took them to the bank. The bank oked the cheques despite knowing that he had no signing authority. Once it all came to light, the bank then sued my friend and drove him into bankruptcy. Fuck banks
Wouldn't you be able to sue the business partner for that sort of behavior?
Re: A Man Walks into a Bank
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about signatures? Surely the signature has the match the one on file or the cheque bounces?
I believe that in the original write-up of this story, which spanned several pages, the author mentioned that he didn't even bother to endorse the check he'd deposited.
In the posted article, he mentions endorsing it with a smiley face.