I'm always amazed when talking to US friends how far behind the rest of the world the US is with respect to banking. For a long time friends were telling me they were getting their salary, paying their rent etc. by cheque, when I had been using automatic wire transfers or debits for a long time already. With respect to your comment above, here in Scandinavia (where banks are also atrocious for other reasons) as well as much of Europe, with most of the internet payment processors (like Klarna) you can use wire transfer, debit from the account as well as direct internet banking for online shopping. We also have swish, which is a payment system were you essentially wire transfer money by using the mobile number.

That said many people (myself included) also use credit cards for their convenience.