This is the script of my national radio report yesterday discussing
the Federal Reserve Board's proposal to eliminate checks as a payment
method in the U.S. financial system. As always there may have been
minor wording variations from this script as I presented my report
live on air.
- - -
Yeah this is pretty alarming and it rather makes one ponder what the
government's priorities really are. But yes, a few days ago, the Fed,
the Federal Reserve Board sent out a press release seeking comments on
a number of proposals including the possibility of banning writing or
accepting checks for payments, that is, shutting down the entire check
processing system.
And their goal apparently would be to force all non-cash payments that
currently are made by checks to instead use electronic payment
systems. And while it's true that a lot fewer checks are written now
than there used to be, and check fraud of course exists, checks still
apparently represent approaching 25% of the total dollar value of
transactions in the U.S. -- and that's a very significant chunk.
Proponents of eliminating checks may argue that various other
countries very rarely or never use checks or in some cases hardly ever
use cash either. Those countries seem to have committed to electronic
payments for pretty much everything, and man the governments there
love this for the real time tracking abilities it provides over their
populations. And of course various countries also combine this with
mandated national identity cards, another concept that is widely
rejected here in the U.S. More to the point though, it doesn't matter
what those other countries have chosen to do in their own countries in
these regards, we can make our own decisions for our own country.
There's a long list of reasons why so many Americans choose checks.
Many Americans are not financially or otherwise able to have bank
accounts or credit or debit cards. Many do not have computers or
smartphones for accessing payment apps. And even for those persons who
regularly use electronic payment apps and systems, that landscape is
an escalating mess. If you're like most people, your email is flooded
with various phishes and other scams related to electronic payments.
"Your payment was declined, call this number!". "You made a purchase,
for help call this number!". All sorts of fraudulent attempts to get
you to call some scam center and hand over financial information to
them. These are flooding the Internet, often delivered via major sites
like Google's Gmail. And then there's the scams that don't just
fraudulently claim to be operating through electronic payment systems,
but actually are using them, and you've probably heard how difficult
or even impossible it can be to get refunds from some electronic
payment systems for people who have been scammed through them.
Many merchants and others especially in various rural areas -- but
also in urban areas -- don't accept electronic payments simply because
associated processing fees eat into their often already meager
incomes. Checks of course have their own issues, but at least you
don't need to prearrange anything to use them. You don't need to know
someone's email address or account number or social media handle to
pay with or accept a check and you're not dealing with electronic
payment sites or apps that are continually trying to upsell you for
services you don't want or need.
In any case, being able to use checks should be an option kept
available, not shut down by government edict. If you want to comment
on this Fed proposal, do a quick search for "fed check press release"
and you should find the pages for commenting pretty easily. You might
also want to contact your elected officials in the House and Senate
and let them know how you feel about this.
I suspect any of us could easily come up with long lists of far more
important issues that need the government's attention, rather than
their pushing to further unnecessarily disrupt so many people's lives
with proposals like this. You really do have to shake your head in sad
astonishment at this one.
- - -
L
- - -
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
[email protected] (https://www.vortex.com/lauren)
Lauren's Blog: https://lauren.vortex.com
Mastodon: https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/@lauren
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Founder: Network Neutrality Squad: https://www.nnsquad.org
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Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility
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