CHECKS CHECK OUT

摘要

A funny thing happens when you write a check at some Wai-Marts: It gets handed right back to you. Hoping to speed payments, reduce costs, and cut fraud, the world's largest retailer now scans paper checks for pertinent information such as the bank and account number―and then gives them back to customers in the checkout line. Remember the old saw, the check's in the mail? Drop it. Digital processing technologies such as those used by Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and the skyrocketing adoption of online bill payment are reshaping the $30 billion business of printing, transporting, and processing checks. Driving the transformation are banks, credit-card companies, and merchants eager to simplify an antiquated system that involves as many as 28 middlemen. They have plenty of motivation: Handling an online payment costs only 10c, roughly one-third that of processing a paper check, according to Atlanta consultant Global Concepts. The result: The number of checks written annually should decline by about one quarter by 2007, to 30 billion, estimates researcher Celent Communications LLC. "This is a transformational moment," says Jonathan Wilk, senior vice-president at Bank of America Corp.