Nowadays, more and more people choose to go abroad, and the United States seems to be a good choice. However, people who have lived in China for decades are entering a foreign country for the first time. They have no idea how to make banks serve them. There was no adequate mental preparation for the matter. In China, the relationship between many people and banks is only in terms of storage. People often only deposit or withdraw money when they go to the bank. But in the United States, more than 90% of payments and transactions are made with checks instead of banknotes. After going through the stage of using shells, precious metals, and banknotes as currency, mankind has now ushered in the era of using checks or credit cards as currency. Every corner of American life is filled with the shadow of checks, so it is certainly impossible for people to ignore the need for banks.

A large part of the Chinese who have just arrived in the United States are not wealthy, and the likelihood of becoming major bank patrons is very small. There are as many as 58,000 banks competing in the United States at the same time (recent data: the number of banks and branches in the United States has increased to 70,000), and they will not give up any potential customer. Therefore, a salesperson with a keen sense of smell in the bank may come to visit you soon after you arrive, and the purpose is of course to attract business. I have to admit that the intensity of competition determines the quality of service. Larger banks in the United States have specialized international departments, where there are salespeople who are proficient in languages ????of different countries. Hearing the local accent from the salesperson's mouth, your guard will be lifted by more than half, and then you will probably be moved by his enthusiasm and responsible spirit. When you are moved, you will not pay enough attention to the ambiguity of the terms, so you choose this bank. But don’t worry, credit is the life of a bank, and the chance of your money being defrauded is very slim. Moreover, if you are not satisfied, you can immediately change banks.

The bank opens an account for you for free, and you have a bank account. From now on, all your income, as well as remittances from elsewhere, will go directly into your account. At the same time, you need to spend money to print a few check books, because in the future, a large part of your expenses, including rent, utility bills, etc., will be paid in the form of checks. If necessary, fill out a check, write the name of the payee (or company), sign it, and send it to the payee. The payee signs the back of the check and delivers the check to the bank that serves him. Through inter-bank bill exchange, the money you pay will be transferred to the payee's account. At the end of the month, the bank will send you all the checks you issued within the month, so that you will know whether the checks you issued and the money have arrived, so that the checks act as receipts. Moreover, if you pay by check, every expenditure or income will be recorded, so illegal transactions can only be carried out in cash. For example, illegal employment of immigrants, wages below the legal minimum, etc. In the United States, the amount of drug transactions is huge, and the choice of cash is very unwise, so gold is sometimes used for transactions.

Americans’ check utilization rate is so high that it penetrates into every detail of life. So what is the difference between paying by check and paying with cash? Americans trust checks mainly because of the advantages of checks compared to cash. advantage.

First, you can pay by check as long as you have funds in your account. If you pay in cash, if there is insufficient cash in the bank, you will not be able to withdraw cash even if you have a deposit, which will delay time and hinder the work. Some people have raised objections that when ordinary people withdraw cash, the situation of insufficient cash in the bank will basically not occur. However, some banks in our country have experienced situations where the remittance has to wait for a period of time due to insufficient cash. This trouble can be avoided by using a check. , and the time to write a check is much shorter than the time to withdraw cash and count money. For Americans who have a strong sense of time, the convenience and speed of checks is also one of the reasons why Americans prefer checks.

Secondly, whether it is a check or cash, they are all proof of your ability to pay. As we all know, a check must be signed to be valid. It recognizes the person, and your money is only at your command. of domination. This is not the case with banknotes. The banknotes belong to whomever they take them out of. Regardless of the reason or method, as long as your money goes into someone else's pocket, it becomes someone else's. This is why incidents such as money theft and money grabbing occur.

Stealing checks is rare, because a check must have the signature of the owner to be valid. A check without a signature is no different from a blank piece of paper and is useless.

Thirdly, we know that funds can also generate value during operation, and the money deposited in the bank will also earn interest. When you use cash, of course you won't earn interest if the money stays in your pocket.

When using a check, the bank has to pay interest even if the money is transferred from one account to another, so the interest lost on cash payments is relatively high. In addition, using checks saves the troublesome process of counting money, avoids the wear and tear of banknotes in circulation, and saves the time and energy of going to the payment office to pay in person. Moreover, the cost and loss of mailing and exchange of checks is far less than that of cash payment. cost. Compared with using cash, using a large number of checks can greatly save the manpower and material resources consumed in transactions.

When people first started using checks, people often worried that the checks would be fraudulent. For example, when a check is mailed, the check is lost or fraudulently collected; the payee receives a bad check. Don't worry, this concern will gradually disappear as you use the check. In fact, all credit transactions have to face such problems, and cash transactions also have such problems. A person from a primitive society would definitely be surprised to use a piece of paper to buy a batch of things, and would even suspect that one party would default on the payment when paying the money and delivering the goods, as if the receiving party insisted that the money was not received, or that the payment was not received. The payer insisted that payment had been made. But in fact, although there are cases of intentional default, the incidence rate is much smaller than that of petty theft. This shows that the credit relationship has become a system that is universally followed by the entire society, and has even become a natural behavioral habit. But once this credit relationship is destroyed, it will be catastrophic for society. And credit fragility is inextricably related to ownership ambiguity.

Unlike the situation where most of the triangular debt of state-owned enterprises is solved by the government printing money, private debt does not have the problem of triangular debt.

In order to circumvent the restriction problem, the United States has established a system to prevent possible check fraud. For example, when buying something by check, the holder of the check needs to show his or her photo ID or driver's license to prove it. If it is discovered that someone has misbehaved with a check, the bank will immediately record the fact on its record. Not only will no bank provide services to him in the future, it will even be difficult for him to find a job and buy a house. Therefore, he will also lose the basic conditions for a foothold in society.

Although American society is free, it also has strict restricted areas. If you go beyond the thunder pool, you will be sad for the rest of your life. The files of banks and insurance companies are very powerful. These files are transparent materials that I can understand at any time. If the content is found to be untrue, it can be corrected through certain procedures. Miscalculating accounts is not a serious mistake, and the disciplinary terms are not too harsh. Writing a bad check, that is, the payable amount is larger than the deposit amount, is not a serious disciplinary violation, and a fine of more than ten yuan is enough. But forging a signature to impersonate someone else's money, or using a check reported lost, is a serious mistake.

Having said that, checks cannot completely replace cash. There are always some scattered expenses in life, just like buying a ticket on the bus. It is extremely inconvenient to use a check, so it is inevitable that there will always be a time to withdraw cash from the bank. At the same time, for the sake of safety and avoiding interest loss, it is very inconvenient to carry a large amount of cash, so you will have to go to the bank to withdraw money frequently. Therefore, in order to facilitate depositors to withdraw money and reduce the cost of banks hiring a large number of staff, electronic automatic banking came into being about 20 years ago. Its basic functions are deposits and withdrawals and inquiry of transaction records. After you open a bank account, you get a bank card with a password that only you know. Insert your bank card into e-banking and enter your password. When the machine confirms through the network that the two match, you can withdraw an integer amount of cash not exceeding US$500 (or a certain amount) from e-banking every day. Of course, you can also deposit it into your For checks and cash received, a detailed statement will be issued by electronic banking after the operation is completed.

There are many electronic banks not only in banks, but also in large supermarkets and on the streets of downtown areas. They do not require anyone to be on duty and are very convenient to use. For the purpose of strict management and prevention of monopoly, U.S. law stipulates that banks are not allowed to establish branches across state lines. But electronic banks can be set up across state lines. There are now several sets of Internet-connected machines used by all banks across the United States. Even if you are traveling in other states, you can still withdraw cash from your own bank, and one or two dollars equivalent to the remittance fee will be automatically deducted from your account. handling fee. Due to the emergence of electronic banking, it has become more convenient to withdraw cash, so cash transactions have replaced some of the original check transactions.

However, if Americans want to travel outside the United States, electronic banking will not work. At this time, travellers' checks demonstrate its advantages. Go to a bank and buy travellers' checks in denominations of US$20 to US$1,000 for a fee of only US$1. There are two spaces on the check for signature. When you buy a traveler's check from a bank, you need to sign on one of the spaces, and then when you use it to pay, sign on the other space in front of the payee. Sign on. The payee confirms that the two signatures are consistent, and the check has the same effect as cash. If a traveler's check is lost, someone who wants to use it fraudulently may not dare to forge a signature in front of the cashier. Moreover, checks can be reported lost by calling. If someone forges a signature and claims a check that has been reported lost, the bank will compensate for the loss.

In view of the many conveniences that checks bring to American life, save Americans a lot of costs, and promote transactions between people, checks have always been particularly popular in the United States. A payment method welcome.