Combine this w/ the previous post:
No, the Check's Not in the Mail
by Brian Alcorn
3:00 a.m. 24.Dec.98.PST
Four times each business day, in a secret location somewhere near San Francisco, a strange ritual takes place. A dozen vans maneuver into position in a large, well-guarded parking garage. They slowly back toward each other until their tailgates form a tight circle.
At the appointed hour, the tailgates fling open. The drivers of the vans begin removing sealed crates from the back of the vehicles and start tossing them to each other. Each of the vans belongs to a different bank in the Bay Area. The parking garage belongs to the California Bankers Clearing House. And the crates being tossed are, pound-for-pound, among the most valuable packages in the world: They are full of checks.
Not all of the nation's business is conducted over the Internet these days. Most of the 65 billion checks written last year -- worth more than US$1 trillion -- wound their way around the US economy with a lot of analog elbow grease. Chartered planes, armored cars, trucks, trains, and lots of labor went into an enormous effort to get checks from bank to bank.
On average, 13 people handle a single check before it's finally laid to rest. The 50-year-old system comes at an enormous cost to the banking industry and the government -- 75 cents to $3 to process a check.
For years now, merchants and bankers have been trying to replace the paper check with electronic banking, but they've failed. Everyone still clings to paper checkbooks.
The number of checks written in the United States has doubled in the past 20 years and is expected to rise by 3 to 5 percent each year until at least 2034. About 34 percent of all consumer payments are still made by paper check.
That may change in 1999. Several initiatives, backed by banks and transaction-processing companies, are scheduled to get underway to test systems that might reduce the flow of paper. If they succeed, the banking industry and the economy could save billions.
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