Ask most people younger than around age 35 about check fraud, and their response likely will be something along the lines of, “Wait, people still use checks?”
Oh yeah, they sure do.
And we’re not just talking about grandma pulling out her checkbook each month to pay the utility bills. A significant number of businesses in the United States continue to make payments the old-fashioned way, by cutting a check and placing it in the mail.
According to data from the U.S. Federal Reserve System, there were approximately 3.15 billion commercial checks issued in 2023. Granted, that is down considerably from the peak of slightly more than 19 billion in 1992. Still, it is more than 3 billion opportunities for somebody to commit check fraud, which has become a major issue for banks in recent years.