Should Paper Checks Be Abolished Like The Penny?

Should Paper Checks Be Abolished Like The Penny?

Good Partner  Tue, September 8, 2026 Jay L. Zagorsky

While Americans are writing fewer checks, they haven't abandoned this means of payment.

Germany is getting rid of paper checks at the end of 2027. Australia is bidding them farewell by 2030. U.S. President Donald Trump followed up his order killing off the penny with an executive order stopping check writing by the federal government.

Should the U.S. follow these other countries and broadly eliminate the ability to write checks?

Years ago, experts predicted that checks would have disappeared by now. However, they are still around, and billions are written each year in the United States.

Why? The quick answer is that businesses love them. And plenty of Americans still use checks for good reasons. But there is more to the story.

I am a business school professor and one of the few academics who advocates for the use of cash. While I have long told everyone about the benefits of paper money, I didn't give paper checks much thought or use them until my mother's recent death. Then I found myself writing checks to the cemetery, funeral home, gravestone engraver and a host of other places. Plus, I started getting refund checks back from her landlord and insurance companies.

These experiences made me look more deeply into this form of payment to understand what was happening.

Fewer checks for bigger bucks

Every three years the U.S. government runs the Federal Reserve Payments Study by asking banks and credit unions for internal information. This survey tracks everything from how often credit cards are used to the number of checks written.

While check usage has sharply declined in the U.S., a significant number – about 9.2 billion in 2024 – are still written, the data shows. The face value of those checks is probably bigger than you'd expect: more than US$24 trillion, not adjusted for inflation. That is almost as large as U.S. gross domestic product of $29 trillion that year.

Not everyone can imagine numbers in billions or trillions, so let's put those figures in more manageable terms.

A little over 150 checks were written per person in 2000. By 2024, the average had plummeted to 27 checks – slightly more than two per month. However, over that time, the amounts typically scribbled or printed on the face of those checks rose.

In 2000, the typical check was worth less than $1,000. By 2024, the average amount had more than doubled to $2,600.

Trends elsewhere are similar. The Bank for International Settlements, which serves as a bank for central banks like the Federal Reserve, has tracked check usage in 25 countries since 2012. Its data shows that in only two other countries is payment by check still commonplace.

And in both of those countries, check usage has fallen more sharply than in the United States.

Chart LINK

TO READ MORE:  https://www.yahoo.com/finance/economy/policy/articles/paper-checks-abolished-penny-225752284.html?action=scout