Paper checks
Today I was reading a blog post by Cedric Otaku, who lives in the US.
He had his new checks stolen from his mailbox (because he was too lazy to pick them up in the morning, but it’s a side issue) and described his experience with Wells Fargo when he tried to revoke them. Turned out that, according to the bank, he was supposed to close his account altogether in order to prevent fraud. That’s because checks come with data on them which allows to generate fraudulent operation, even if the check itself had been revoked.
What’s interesting is not the Wells Fargo level of service, but how different the payment infrastructure is in the US compared to, say, Poland. The whole business of paper checks with all its aspects mentioned in the comments (I’m not an expert in checks, caveat lector) - lack of signature validation, manual processing, triviality of fraud - seems incredible mess from the perspective of country where electronic money transfers are so prevalent.
