I mean... The account exists if you log into it or not. You still need to keep track of it so that you're paying into the correct account, and so that you know how much to pay.
Only you now have to talk to a person if you need to check or change anything.
Not the account for the random hotel or restaurant. "Pay with the O'Burger app!" "Collect 425 SkyPoints with a Platinum Membership!"
You don't need an online account to buy food at a grocery, but if you had one I guarantee they'd spam the heck out of you, alongside whatever else they might do with your data.
I mean, paying for Netflix with cash would definitely be a power move.
Utilities don't have special offers that I know of. Check or online is very country dependent though.
I'm having a little trouble thinking of a service that would have automatic reminders but not require an account to access the service... Hotel? Something with layaway? Maybe car payments. Tuition too. Those don't exactly seem like spurious account services though... Maybe the reminders are for pickup?
My VPN sometimes sends me reminders and special offers when my contact is almost up, for example. Mobile phone data usage reminders and warnings. Even just reminders that they're going to be charging your card on payment day.
But mainly I don't wanna leave home so paperless has already won for me lol
There will be lots of a useless accounts you have to make in life. Scale yourself. Many such accounts will not be optional. At least this one provides you with some value.
Sure, in general yes. But in reference to the comment, writing a check they would already have my name address and some reference to my bank account details even without the online account, which implies a high degree of trust.
If I need an account to read an article on a website? Then I’m not interested in reading your article.
V true. I was think more along the lines of any sort of cash, debit, check transfer that doesn’t involve accounts or folks skimming money off the top rather than checks specifically when interpretting the meme.
Every account need a valid mail direction, ofte als with 2FA a phone number, both pretty easy to track in the network. Every website know your ISP, your public IP, your OS and a lot of other data which they can store and sell it to third parties for commercial reasons. Never create an account if it is not essential for you.
Pretty sure that a company that I would otherwise write checks to with my name address and phone number already has the lion’s share of those details. My IP address and operating system are the least of my concern in that case.
Hiding my IP address from the power company seems like a limited improvement.
Do you guys not have direct debit? All my bills are paid automatically. Manually paying my bills sounds like a pain and I would definitely forget/double pay if I needed to do it that way
We do. I never give companies power to pull money from my account. I realize it's a convenience for some people in the way they budget, so no judging.... I've just been screwed by it one too many times. I keep full control over my finances. I budget everything out on an Excel template I created. It actually doesn't take much time at all ..an hour or so once a week to get everything balanced and paid for the month.
This is the answer. Here in this US checks are still widely used, and sometimes, thanks to processing fees, the only payment except cash someone will accept. Mobile payments, though available, haven't really taken off here like in Europe.
I used bank deposits. First through the mail, then through electronic-but-not-Internet payment systems and finally online and mobile banking. Also bank authorizations.
Checks were never big here, but they had been phased out completely in the 00s. I haven’t actually seen one since the nineties. I have never owned a check book.
This is funny, my son works at a printing place that prints, among other things, checks. And they apparently make a LOT of checks. He’s 25 and was confused why so many people need checks.
This. I can tell you from a banking standpoint we were ordering FAR fewer registers and other check stuff over the years and before I left they had reduced the amount we even could order to like 10 books per order, so not at lot and old ladies would come take them all.
Yes, my wife and my employers both pay using checks as well as printed invoices after direct deposits.
My entire family uses checks to pay each other. I'm not going to Venmo my dad $15,000. And his back doesn't let me transfer funds to him for since idiotic reason.
Man, I would never pay rent or a mortgage payment with a deposit. I did that once, and they claimed I didn't pay several times, and I had no receipt. I had to pay my bank $20 to provide proof of deposit (several times) Fuck that. Also fuck US Bank.
In ye old days I would fill out a slip of paper and mail it to the bank.
Deposit is probably the wrong word. It’s more a transfer order? Deposit is what came up when I translated my local term, but it’s not like I stuffed cash in an envelope or anything.
I don't know about that guy but you can't even get cheque books in NZ anymore. They were phased out, mostly because electronic payments are ubiquitous and most places already stopped accepting cheques a decade or two back.
I'm mid 40s and didn't get a credit card until I was 25. And I couldn't even pay for any utilities, rent or car payments with it. And still can't. Online bill pay wasn't a thing until like after the recession.
It's mainly in the USA it seems. In South Africa, we have had internet banking since 1995. So businesses stopped using checks around that time. Phone banking with DTMF was popular around that time as well. Bank transfers we used more than checks for businesses before then.
For individuals, debit cards became the default around the same time. Same functionality as a credit card, without the credit.
Then Internet banking became mainstream for individuals around the 2000s when everyone got access to the internet on their phones.
Cash remained popular throughout since ATM infrastructure was very good in South Africa.
How is this possible? How did you pay your bills before online billpay systems - did you pay them all by phone?
We had something called an ‘acceptgiro’, it was basically a pre-filled money transfer order. Usually the amount, beneficiary and some reference number were pre-printed. All you had to do was sign it and mail it to the bank (which usually was free, you had pre-paid envelopes from the bank). It was usually attached to the bill, basically a tear-off part of the bill that you signed, stuffed into an envelope and mailed.
For recurring payments you usually give the other party ongoing permission to directly take it from your account. This is still extremely common and how I pay 99.999% of my bills. For things like mortgages, rent and insurance it’s usually required to pay in this way. Basically, my monthly bills get paid without me even having to think about it.
What? The only payments I make that take checks are my bills and it's not like I wouldn't have to keep track of those just because I'm paying by check. I don't understand this at all.
Pretty sure they mean one less account someone could track you with, because yeah, staying on top of sending monthly checks for stuff is something I'm very glad I don't have to do anymore. My credit took multiple hits in my younger days from bills I forgot to pay on time.
Stuff? That isn't very much money. Our monthly grocery bill alone is over $1,000. Plus rent. Plus car payments. Insurance. We're already over $5,000 a month.
If it's any indication... the last time I ordered checks their website was littered with nuisance upsell popups that significantly hindered that task (felt kinda like Indiana Jones navigating booby traps), so I think the "check industry" (if that is a thing?) is getting desperate.
Also, most all US small to mid sized business transactions are by check.
Why? It is a bank transfer with extra steps. A check can get unreadable, get lost... No one in Germany would write a check for a permit fee or to pay a business partner. You pay online. Fast, safe, can't get lost, easy to proof what, when to whom you have paid for years to come. And the transfer won't get through if you do not have money on your account or are allowed to overdraw, while you can write whatever you want on a check and then run.
It is not cash or check it is bank transfer or check and the bank transfer is the safer, faster option. All they do at a bank is to scan the check and to turn it into the exact same bank transfer it could have been in the first place. All you do is adding a layer of risk by writing on a piece of paper.
I find that really funny, because many Germans still refuse to buy their groceries without cash, many like me do not own a credit card only debit cards, but no one younger than 90 uses a check. I am 58 years old and have never owned checks.
I don't know what to tell you, but I work in business in the US and work in invoicing in the construction industry.
Everything is done via paper, full stop.
Bank transfers do not generate invoices, full stop. Company to company payments are made using a PO or check. Nothing else, in my experience, are accepted.
These are for amounts of $1 to tens of millions of $$$.
I had an apartment that switched payment processor that jacked up my credit card fee well above my cash back (prob cuz people like me ended up saving like 10/mo), so I just switched to bank issued checks that they send for me.
Using the checkbook I got 20 years ago is just a massive pain in the ass.
