I've used both the UK and US.

Electronic payments in the US are painful and slow. They often don't work at all on weekends, and certainly don't have the 2-3 hour speed of the "Faster Payments" system in the UK (which is often borderline instant).

Banks actually intentionally make it a real pain in the butt to send money to another bank, and stupidly easy to send money between accounts linked at the same bank. Last time we needed to set that up it took almost an hour, because of how they confusingly set up the UI and naming. Then the payment took a full 7 day week to arrive in the other party's account.

Plus in the US you have to have $1500 in a savings account (almost 0% interest "savings") and pay in your pay cheque and jump through a million other hoops just to get a free current (checking) account. So you'd assume the fees would be lower and customer service better? NOPE. Fees are higher than the UK, and CS is worse.

Everyone keeps saying "join USAA!" but unfortunately they closed the loophole that allowed non-military to sign up for a checking account right before I could. So no dice. Traditional banks are just horrible in the US, just awful, it cannot be overstated.

You're incorrect about the cost of accounts. I can have $2 in my checking or savings account, and there are no fees. I've never had a bank account that cost me money to keep. I also don't have to jump through any hoops, I merely walked into the bank and signed up for an account. Zero cost, zero hassle.

I'm also not sure what electronic payments you're referring to (transfers to others?). I deposit money and it shows up instantly. I buy something from Amazon.com via a Visa card attached to my checking account and it shows up instantly on my account.

>I'm also not sure what electronic payments you're referring to (transfers to others?)

I transfer money to and from my bank accounts using ACH transfers. It typically takes a few days for those to clear.

> Banks actually intentionally make it a real pain in the butt to send money to another bank, and stupidly easy to send money between accounts linked at the same bank.

If something is wrong or fraudulent (such as, say, exploiting a race condition in how transactions are handled) it's much much easier to arbitrate or reverse everything in-house.

I'd wager a lot of people here have--one time or another--written a bit of code saying "sleep X seconds to be safe", or "wait until you confirm Y had no errors". Same kind of idea.

I should have been clearer, it is a UI issue, rather than just a speed issue. Sure, bank to bank is slower, but the UI to send out of your own bank is designed to be as hard to do as they can get away with (e.g. I have to "pay a bill" and then instead of searching for the "company" I have to search and let it fail, and only then will it let me manually enter the other party's bank account info in raw text boxes).

I've never had a problem getting an actual, real, free checking account. I actually have several. (4 at the moment... don't ask) And 3 of them have free paper checks as well.

Congratulations for you.

I don't see your point? I didn't say it was hard to get a free checking account, I said they make you jump through hoops and open a bunch of related products so they'll waive the $10-15/month fee.

>I said they make you jump through hoops and open a bunch of related products so they'll waive the $10-15/month fee.

That hasn't been my personal experience. I've never had to jump through hoops or have a minimum balance.

I'm just sharing my experience which is apparently different from yours.

Oh wait... I had to pay a one time $5 fee to join one of my local credit unions.

that agrees with my experience. Simple.com for example. Super easy and a great service. No paper checks, but there are others with paper checks. No jumping through hoops.

They don't have brick and mortar offices, but I don't miss it.

A while back I even found someone offering business accounts for free.

Credit unions can't help with the abysmal transfer situation but at least they aren't out to get you at every turn.

> I did have a vague idea that many still use cheques over there

Almost nobody uses checks anymore. I do, but I'm old and cranky. ;)

Actually, the only time I use a check is to pay rent because check or money order is the only way my landlord accepts payment. Apparently there is something called "e-checks" or something but writing out a check once a month isn't a pain point for me.

And it was required to write out a check (or money order) to get my US passport.

My bank prints a check once a month and snail mails it to my landlord. As far as I'm concerned it's an e-check, and I think with certain vendors my bank will actually send it electronically rather than by snail mail.

Yep, that's what people were telling me an e-check was. But I haven't looked into it myself, I just haven't because I mail a check without even thinking about it. Its just been engrained in me as a habit.

Businesses do.

At least, several of them keep sending us cheques as payment for our products, even though we keep asking them to use wire transfers :/

All global card systems generally are funded by interchange fees (paid by the merchant to the card issuing bank), which varies depending on location and card type.

In UK the interchange for most EMV debit cards seems to be 0.08 pounds - 12 US cents, about half of the US level.

As someone who moved from Australia to the US... it's crazy.

I remember buying a computer in Australia with a cheque - it was viewed highly suspiciously. The merchant wanted to call the bank, wanted to know why I couldn't use a card, wanted to hold the computer until it cleared...

(Leaving aside options such as repo, which while feasible aren't really desired) - in the US, without so much as a call to Telecheck or similar, or my bank, I bought a $16,000 SUV with a personal check.

>in the US, without so much as a call to Telecheck or similar, or my bank, I bought a $16,000 SUV with a personal check.

That's atypical in my experience in the US. The dealer has always wanted me to get a certified (may not be the technically correct term) from my bank. Not that it's a big deal; you go to the bank, they put a hold on the amount in your account, and they stamp the check a couple times.

That said, checks still tend to be favored (even if they're issued directly from the bank) for many recurring payments, local service people, individual to individual casual transactions and the like.

Electronic transfer is used in the UK, for most bills and many individual to individual transactions. I've not heard of a bank posting a cheque on my behalf.

I found some statistics, but they don't include debit (or credit) cards, just normal transfers between banks: http://www.paymentscouncil.org.uk/resources_and_publications... .

Looking at "1990 to date", I'm not sure I'm reading the tables correctly. Were there really 265 million cheques processed in January 1990? That's 10 for every household. Last month was 46 million, 1.7 for every household — still seems high.

In any case, it compares with over 620M electronic payments for December 2014.

I easily believe those numbers-especially if they include the "electronic payments" made from my bank's website that actually just involve the bank cutting a check and mailing it. I don't actually know how the payment is made in each case but I'm pretty sure that payments to, say, my trash collection company are ultimately via paper check from my bank.

I probably write 2-3 physical checks a month (housekeeper, random other service people, personal payments for various activities) and another 2 to 3 from my bank. And that's with doing all the automatic payments for utilities etc. that I can.

That was my point though — British banks don't post each other cheques on anyone's behalf. There's an older BACS system for electronic transfer, and a newer one called Faster Payments.

The numbers show 13× as many electronic payments as cheques, and I can believe 10 electronic payments per person (salary, six or seven bills, couple of credit cards, plus business use).

It's reaching the point where someone using a check at a store is an amusing novelty.

Lots more people pay bills and rent by check though.

I changed bank in September. The whole process was online, and I had the new account number immediately. My old account's balance, regular bill payments and details of people I've transferred money to online was automatically moved to the new account. (I was impressed with this, there was more information visible on the new bank's system than I'd been able to see on the old bank's clunky system.) Payments to the old account are automatically redirected for 13 months — my workplace was migrating to a new finance system the same month, and received an automated message when they paid my salary.

There are no fees for normal usage, in the last seven years with the previous account I paid one fee (international transfer). The new bank gave me £100 as a 'reward' for switching to them.

I didn't receive a chequebook, but I haven't used one for years.

Over here in the Netherlands i've never seen a check being used. I just checked my banks website, and they even stopped making them.

With online bill pay from my bank, I'm using fewer checks though. Pretty much any bill I get in the mail, I pay with the banks website that will mail a business a check on my behalf.

The only time I use check is for in-person things (when I don't have the cash); or for small school things (field trips, teacher gifts, etc.) where I don't want to send my kid in with actual cash.