New Check System

During the summer I did an internship at a financial institution and it amazes me how many people try and cheat the system. By this I mean they will write checks and know that it will take about three to four days to hit their account if the company cashes it right away and they try to give themselves some extra time to put money into their accounts. Most of the time this never works. There were at least twenty checks every night that would never clear a members account. Checks are not being used for their intended purpose. People are trying to use checks as a temporary loan and they are not intended for that.

I read an article from MSNBC that stated that checks are now going to be coming out of people's accounts within hours. This will cause a lot of problems. People now have to rethink their ideas about checks. A lot of people will end up with bounced checks if they write the check with out the money in their account. The financial institutions will now be scanning all of the checks and a scanned copy of the check will be sufficient for proof of payment. Many people instead of making sure they have enough money will now be paying for service charges for the return checks that they write. They will end up paying more if they don't have the money to begin with. It was stated in the article that there will be about 7 million more checks will be hit with overdraft charges. With the new check system it will be interesting to see how badly it will affect the public. It is nice to see that financial institutions are now doing something about this problem.