Tuesday, July 9, 2024
The Minneapolis-based retailer said the decision was prompted by “extremely low volumes” of checks. It will, however, continue to accept checks through the Target Circle Week sale, Target’s answer to Amazon Prime Day, according to Minneapolis television station KARE, which was the first news outlet to report the retailer’s decision on POS check acceptance.
Target, in its statement, noted that customers still have many options for paying at the POS, including their proprietary cards (known as Target Circle), Visa and Mastercard-branded credit and debit cards, cash, digital wallets, SNAP/EBT, and buy now, pay later plans. Target will also accept check payments from customers who mail in payments on their Target Circle cards.
Target is not the first store to decline to accept checks. According to their websites the discount grocer Aldi and Whole Foods also decline to accept checks. Check usage, which peaked in the 1990s took a nose dive during the pandemic, as consumers turned to contactless payment options like digital wallets and peer-to-peer apps like Venmo and Zelle.
The Federal Reserve reported that the number of checks written has been declining at a rate of 7.2 percent a year since 2018. The average value of check payments, however, has been increasing. In 2015, for example, the average check payment was $1,609; in 2021 it was $2,430, according to the Fed’s data.
As the numbers suggest, plenty of places still accept checks, but they tend to be for high-value purchases. Brandes Elitch, a former banker and former columnist for The Green Sheet, pointed out in a recent email that car dealers remain bullish on checks. “A dealer will make a very small margin on a new car sale, somewhere between 1 and 2 percent,” he wrote. “When you buy a new car, the dealer isn’t going to let you use your rewards card and pay 3 percent” in interchange.
From the check writer’s perspective, check writing offers greater control. “I support about 10 charities," Elitch noted. "I don’t want them debiting my [checking] or credit card account. I will send them a check when I am ready to do so. Allowing a merchant to debit your ACH offers the same risks as giving out your card number.”
It’s not just older Americans who like checks, either. According to a survey by FinanceBuzz, millennials are just as likely to write checks as they are to use mobile wallets. The website reported that a survey it fielded indicated that 37 percent of millennials had written checks in the past month while 38 percent had used a mobile wallet to make a payment. 
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