Respect for Checks
Are checks dead? It depends on who you ask. Some people believe that they are, and others believe they will be around for many years to come. A study was done that showed that check usage is declining but at a steady rate of about 2 billion a year, which is less than 10 percent a year. This figure has remained steady for almost a decade. The study also said that it is very likely that processing checks will never disappear completely. By 2020 checks will most likely still be around with about 10-11 billion in circulation being most likely.
Almost all business to business payments are check-based and will most likely continue to be so in the future. The Federal Reserve showed that checks only represented fifteen percent of the volume of non-cash payments in the US and that debit cards represented the largest, weighing in at forty-seven percent of the total. However, checks made up thirty-three percent of the total value of non-cash payments, and debit cards made up only two percent.
Processing Checks Is Cheap
One of the reasons you should process checks for large transactions is that checks cost little to nothing to process. Merchant fees for a Visa or Mastercard transaction can be more than three percent of the total. There are also the legal considerations of processing checks vs. credit cards. Check law is usually more favorable toward businesses than credit card processing laws are. Also, with the invention of Remote Digital Capture (RDC), checks can clear faster than credit card payments. It is common to receive funding the same day or the next day for RDC transactions. The risk management side of depositing checks has improved drastically in recent years because of technological advancements. There are companies out there that specialize in spotting fraudulent checks. These companies inform businesses about 95 percent of demand deposit accounts, which happen to check that are cleared the same day.
There are systems that allow your business to process both credit card payments and checks. With PayJunction, you can accept credit cards and checks in your web browser. PayJunction will securely store account numbers to allow for repeat billing without you having to re-key in all the customer account information for each transaction. You can also schedule credit card or checking accounts to be billed on a recurring basis, such as for monthly or weekly subscriptions or memberships. Streamline your payment processing today with PayJunction.
Processing Checks
