In reading through the comments, I wonder which generalizations can be drawn about the US habit of paying by cheque. This paper slip that is covering just .1% of all cashless transactions in Germany these days.
I'm amazed at Americans shaking their heads about using fax machines, while sitting over their monthly cheques for rent, etc.
On the other hand, there was a legal obligation for fax use for signature transactions in Germany until legislation said a scanned pdf is equivalent. And fax is still considered privacy conserving, while email is not, so in medical contexts they wind send you a PDF (could be eavesdropped), but they will send you a fax with e g. your lab report.
American check use has been dwindling for decades. It was the elephant in the room when I worked for a transaction risk management firm based on checks in the mid-90s, even. Back then, even as an employee of TeleCheck, the ONLY time I used a paper check at point of sale was my dry cleaner (because she didn't take credit cards and I rarely had much cash only).
Mailed checks -- rent, utilities, etc -- have held on longer, but it's probably been 10 years since I even OWNED checks. My wife has some, because until recently it was the most convenient way to pay her student loans, so if for some reason we needed a check we'd just have her deal with it.
I'm almost 52, and our approach here is pretty normal. All our utilities are paid online. I guess taxes are the only thing we still need a check for.
So, yeah, we shake our heads a fax machines, and the people doing so are also shaking their heads at checks, too.
The notion that fax is somehow safer or more secure than email is utterly laughable, and has been for 20 years. A huge chunk of corporate fax numbers are just gateways to a system that routes a PDF to email. It's literally the same thing. And if it's not, fax is WORSE since it relies on the physical security of the fax machine.
Good I'm glad to hear that cheques are used less now.
Regarding security, the logic/claim is that the long distance transport between the organizations is "safe" via phone. The in-house processing on the recipients last mile is their security problem. And the pdf to fax in-house infrastructure "is safe, IT said".
That public internet, dark and sinister, in between the two, is not to be trusted, though. That's the legislatures position over here.
Well, it depends, doesn't it? If you have plain old phone service on either end, that's not the same network -- which is possibly the case with small, older companies and individuals. Not everything is VOIP.
I've been led to believe that many telecoms use voip on the backend and your pots phone call is actually going over the internet. I don't know how much of that is true.
It's definitely being routed over fibers, sure, but while faxes in theory can routed over the internet (T.38, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T.38, which what Google Fiber is using https://support.google.com/fiber/answer/6377387), in most POTS cases it's still done outside internet because of latency and compatibility concerns (unlike VoIP that human perception can mask small jitters), it's just transformed into light and back for long-distance calls (or if the machine at the end uses EPON T.38).
> I'm amazed at Americans shaking their heads about using fax machines, while sitting over their monthly cheques for rent, etc.
Many Americans no longer pay for their rent by check. Heck, I had to go to the bank last year when somebody wanted me to pay by check...because I hadn't used one for a few years. Many of us don't use cash either...its fun just carrying a phone around these days.
> And fax is still considered privacy conserving, while email is not, so in medical contexts they wind send you a PDF (could be eavesdropped), but they will send you a fax with e g. your lab report.
You just don't login to something like Mychart and see the result?
Point being: no Germans are sitting over cheques, for anything. They virtually don't exist any more for private persons. The last cheque I've got was from an insurance, a few years back, and it could only be cashed into a checkings account, not cashed out.
I get your MyChart hint. Anyhow, the "digital health file" prototypes were hacked again and again and it's been delayed several times to get to tight privacy.
I lived in Switzerland before so I know kind of how it works: the blue/pink slips for paying things are really convenient, you just don't need checks. And I lived in China for 9 years where checks don't exist either (because the trust system isn't really in place, so they went straight to QR-based mobile payments). In the USA, a lot of people don't use checks anymore for practical purposes (though there are some hold outs, and you might need to write a check once or twice every 5 years). Checks and cash are just things that you don't need to use anymore. I can't wait until I don't have to carry my credit card in my phone anymore (I already don't have to pull it out more than a couple of times a week).
> Anyhow, the "digital health file" prototypes were hacked again and again and it's been delayed several times to get to tight privacy.
That sounds like Germany, they are conservative like that, and they probably aren't wrong.
Faxes aren't bad though, there are plenty of fax2email gateways that make them as convenient as receiving email.
In my experience (now perhaps ten or more years outdated), fax is still legally preferable because of the time stamping available to both sender and receiver, giving fax a proof of point-to-point transmission and receipt email doesn't provide.
Also, back then (2010 or so) my employer dealt with a lot of remote sites (logging camps and lumber yard offices) that had POTS but no Internet. That has probably changed a lot.
Use of checks is rapidly dying in the US. My credit card gives 1-3% cashback for purchases, I use it for everything possible and pay the bill in full each month, so no interest.
As late as 2015
some common entities would not reliably accept credit cards (government, very small shops), but that’s almost completely gone now and COVID has pushed most of the remaining holdouts to accept digital payments.
Any situation or credit card doesn’t work such as my mortgage, I use a bank transfer or plain old cash.
I'm amazed at Americans shaking their heads about using fax machines, while sitting over their monthly cheques for rent, etc.
On the other hand, there was a legal obligation for fax use for signature transactions in Germany until legislation said a scanned pdf is equivalent. And fax is still considered privacy conserving, while email is not, so in medical contexts they wind send you a PDF (could be eavesdropped), but they will send you a fax with e g. your lab report.