On 7/1/19 5:01 AM, William Donzelli via cctalk wrote:
In every other country I've visited or lived in -- about 30 or 40 of
them -- banknotes are all different sizes, so that totally blind
people can sort by size if they have a few of them. I daresay the very
skilled can do it by absolute, not relative, size. Sighted people can
and do do it by touch without really thinking about it.
US currency is the most most seriously counterfeited in the world, due
to being useful almost anywhere. This is why the bills are not very
distinctive - you are supposed to look at them. Most counterfeits are
good, but not good enough, and can (and will) stick out in a batch of
bills - the might just look "funny" or "odd". Have millions of eyes
looking for the counterfeits ever day of the year is actually quite
effective. I once worked at a bank, and the number of bogus bills that
the tellers would get every month was very significant - and most
actually stuck out like a sore thumb!.
I sold a $3500 car once for cash to a guy who sold his goods at a booth
at fairs and shows. He received lots and lots of $20 bills in payment,
so that is what he paid me with. I kept the cash instead of depositing
it in the bank and going to an ATM to get cash out.
One day I was counting out some cash and two of the bills felt funny.
This was before a lot of the anti-counterfeiting features in current $20
bills. The bills themselves looked really close to real ones, but the
feel of the paper was wrong.
Paper cheques disappeared in Britain a decade ago
and are very rare now.
That is mostly the case here as well. Most under-40 people do not have
a checkbook anymore. In my business, I get maybe two payments per year
with checks - well under 1/10 of a percent of total payments.
My American friends and colleagues over here talk about US cheque
processing and sending _images_ of cheques to one another, and the
Czechs are incredulous. This is like hearing about carrying letters by
horse-drawn carriage in these parts; this is a technology that never
really happened here and that pretty much no living person has ever
seen.
There are still a few institutions and older folks that still use
checks (like the annoying people that hold up the line in a grocery
store, writing out a check), so the image deposit system is just an
effort to cut down the foot traffic to banks. More convenience for
customers, and less labor costs for banks. It is handy to have, but
really, not many people use it much, simply because getting a paper
check is just a rare occurrence these days.
Maybe for you. I did a group purchase of tickets for a club I am a
member of. Almost everyone paid me for their tickets paid with checks.
I help organize motorsports events; my expenses are reimbursed with checks.
alan
--
Will
