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The Long Shadow of Checks

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Re: The Long Shadow of Checks

#21

Post by gosub100 »

w3ll_w3ll_w3ll wrote: post #15
reaperducer wrote: post #13

The longer you live, and the more things you do, the more you realize that checks are still alive and well. You still need checks for: Charitable donations - Many charities maximize every penny, and electronic contributions eat into that. Paying my accountant - Good accountants make every penny count, and aren't interested in tithing from their revenue to credit card companies. Tipping the paper boy Tipping the doorm…

I don't undertand why there is not a better alternative in US, like a bank transfer/wire. In the EU, these transfers are often free at most banks, or at most, they incur a fee of 1 or 2 euros.

There is, Zelle works pretty well for smaller amounts. Paypal jinxed themselves early on by lobbying so hard to be "not-a-bank" (even though they do everything a bank does). If they hadn't used their not-a-bank status to screw so many people for so long (I think they're better now, not sure), they could have been the de-facto payment processor by now, at least for debit.

Re: The Long Shadow of Checks

#22

Post by paulddraper »

sneed_chucker wrote: post #19

Honestly, I just hate how insecure and legacy everything involving banking in this country is. For example, payroll - there's literally no reason your employer needs to store your account and routing number as another piece of your personal info that they can lose when some hacker finds out their MySQL admin password is "admin" Like, the system should be that you give your employer your banks name, plus a UUID associ…

And most utility/etc bills will require ACH (or a payment fee).

So now Bob's Valley Energy Inc has the information to empty your account.

---

(Though FWIW, probably neither your employer nor your utility company is storing the information themselves in a MySQL db.)

Re: The Long Shadow of Checks

#23

Post by WalterBright »

reaperducer wrote: post #13

The longer you live, and the more things you do, the more you realize that checks are still alive and well. You still need checks for: Charitable donations - Many charities maximize every penny, and electronic contributions eat into that. Paying my accountant - Good accountants make every penny count, and aren't interested in tithing from their revenue to credit card companies. Tipping the paper boy Tipping the doorm…

I pay for things with credit card if they don't tack on a fee for it. I pay with a check if they do.

Re: The Long Shadow of Checks

#24

Post by clintonb »

sneed_chucker wrote: post #19

Honestly, I just hate how insecure and legacy everything involving banking in this country is. For example, payroll - there's literally no reason your employer needs to store your account and routing number as another piece of your personal info that they can lose when some hacker finds out their MySQL admin password is "admin" Like, the system should be that you give your employer your banks name, plus a UUID associ…

> It would be trivial to implement and make things much more secure…

If it were truly trivial, this would have been implemented long ago. This isn’t a pure engineering problem as much as it’s a “convincing people to do it” problem.

Re: The Long Shadow of Checks

#25

Post by dqv »

sneed_chucker wrote: post #19

Honestly, I just hate how insecure and legacy everything involving banking in this country is. For example, payroll - there's literally no reason your employer needs to store your account and routing number as another piece of your personal info that they can lose when some hacker finds out their MySQL admin password is "admin" Like, the system should be that you give your employer your banks name, plus a UUID associ…

I mean take a page from cryptocurrencies [0] and allow multiple wallets. Then add on access control. Payroll is always going to want to be able to pull back from the “wallet”, but that doesn’t mean there can’t be some access control mechanism that says “only payroll can push to or pull from this wallet address”.

[0]: or whatever thing one wants to say is responsible for generating the idea of multiple electronic wallets. I get that some people think crypto is dumb. Take your pick on what was responsible for this idea.

Re: The Long Shadow of Checks

#26

Post by lmz »

sneed_chucker wrote: post #19

Honestly, I just hate how insecure and legacy everything involving banking in this country is. For example, payroll - there's literally no reason your employer needs to store your account and routing number as another piece of your personal info that they can lose when some hacker finds out their MySQL admin password is "admin" Like, the system should be that you give your employer your banks name, plus a UUID associ…

As a non American, the idea of a bank account number being a kind of secret that is usable to pull money out of the account is the most curious thing to me. I guess something like this can only exist in a high trust environment.

Re: The Long Shadow of Checks

#27

Post by Scubabear68 »

timdev2 wrote: post #16
Scubabear68 wrote: post #12

This started out as a good narrative on the history of checks, but quickly devolved into a political rant about poor people being victims of banks, and no real criminals write bad checks. The first is true, but the second is not. Check fraud was a very big deal for years for criminals. I don’t know if it is anymore given the progress in electronic payments.

I don't think that's a fair reading. At most, the piece describes a common political rant, and then says "Phrased that way, it sounds almost fantastically unjust. And… it’s complicated." Your comment, in contrast, strikes me as being much closer to a reflexive political rant than the essay.

Actually my focus was less on poor people and more on the incorrect assumption in the article that true check fraud was non existent.

Re: The Long Shadow of Checks

#28

Post by otteromkram »

peter_l_downs wrote: post #2

> One control which we made for checks to reduce systemic risk continues to have consequences more than a century later. Most disagreements between you and a grocery store are beneath the notice of the law. If you and your grocery store have a disagreement about a check specifically, you can go to jail. The crime is sometimes called “uttering”, for charming historical reasons. patio11: you write a lot, and have taugh…

He doesn't always leave some footwork up to the reader.

Take this passage, for example, where the term "Clearing" is expanded upon:

> The UCC facilitated banks clearing each others’ checks. (“Clearing” is a magic finance word. Clearing a check refers to completing the process which the check agrees to: the writer sees money leave their account and the person depositing the check sees it enter theirs. This is much more complicated than it sounds in this quick gloss.)

Re: The Long Shadow of Checks

#29

Post by tjader »

clintonb wrote: post #24
sneed_chucker wrote: post #19

Honestly, I just hate how insecure and legacy everything involving banking in this country is. For example, payroll - there's literally no reason your employer needs to store your account and routing number as another piece of your personal info that they can lose when some hacker finds out their MySQL admin password is "admin" Like, the system should be that you give your employer your banks name, plus a UUID associ…

> It would be trivial to implement and make things much more secure… If it were truly trivial, this would have been implemented long ago. This isn’t a pure engineering problem as much as it’s a “convincing people to do it” problem.

It is implemented in most of the world outside of the US.

It is scary that the info you need to deposit funds into an account in the US also allows you to withdraw funds from it.

Re: The Long Shadow of Checks

#30

Post by IshKebab »

reaperducer wrote: post #20
w3ll_w3ll_w3ll wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't undertand why there is not a better alternative in US, like a bank transfer/wire. In the EU, these transfers are often free at most banks, or at most, they incur a fee of 1 or 2 euros.

I guess the opposite could also be asked: Why doesn't the EU use something proven, durable, redundant, and sensible like checks instead of relying on fragile computers that have thousands more points of failure?

Because cheques are unreliable, insecure, slow, inconvenient and expensive, and electronic bank transfers solve literally all of those issues. What kind of a stupid question is that?

Do you think cheques are not processed by computers?

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