Payment Paradox: Millennials Using Checks
We’ve noted here before that there is a Millennial and sub-Millennial generation for whom checks are a bit of a novelty. Still, they will need to use checks more than they may expect or desire, so it’s important that they learn how to use them properly.
Fraud is becoming easier and easier to overcome in properly executed checks, but persons who are unfamiliar with some of the basic mechanics of check-writing — simply from lack of experience — are at heightened risk.
Millennials do indeed use checks, according to Insight Center:
As it turns out, the accepted theory that millennials univerally prefer tech to traditional payments like checks and cash couldn’t be more inaccurate, and there is data to prove it.
• 80 percent use cash
• 64 percent carry cash most of the time
• 4x more millennials use cash than the top mobile payment platforms
• 3x more millennials use checks than mobile payment platforms
• 42 percent still use checks
• More millennials use cash more than debit cards
Insight Center cites three reasons millennials still embrace checks, even if they are behind apps in popularity:
- It’s easier to pay small businesses
- Millennials Are embracing non-traditional employment
- It’s the easiest option (aside from cash)
In response to over one million searches for “how to write a check” in the last 12 months, Harland Clarke built a site called “How to Write a Check.” Though it may be aimed primarily at inexperienced millennials, it doesn’t hurt to review the finer points of consumer-side check security!
Each field of the check relates to payment negotiability. Check out the table of use cases which can be now validated by software.
(See also “How to Endorse a Check.”)
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