Check Out Time!

Cut out the check.

Soon we will be saying goodbye to the paper check. The original money transaction will come to an end in the United States. More Americans are using debit and credit transactions and paper checks as well as cash will be a thing of the past.

American currency still is used but more people are turning to cards.

The paper check has pretty much disappeared from the grocery checkout line, and if the trend continues, this once all-important mode of payment may become extinct. The number of checks being written is dropping by 1.8 billion a year, and at that rate, checks would go away entirely by 2026, according to Business Insider.

In 2024, check writers skew older and are likely at the margins of the banking community, according to Anchin. Americans over the age of 55 are the most likely to write checks every month, GoBankingRates also found.

However, it wasn’t always that way.

Although checks, as we know them today, first originated in the 11th century, they didn’t become mainstream until the early 20th century, following the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, according to a historical survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.

But back then, “everyday people didn’t have checking accounts, that was for rich people,” said Stephen Quinn, professor of economics at Texas Christian University and co-author of the Atlanta Fed’s report. “It wasn’t until after World War II that checking accounts were a common thing.”

Postwar prosperity greatly expanded the use of checking accounts to middle-class households, making checks the most widely used noncash payment method in the U.S., the Atlanta Fed found.

Personal checks continued to gain steam until the mid-1990s, when credit and debit cards largely took over. Since 2000, check-writing has plummeted by nearly 75%.