Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering

Do Americans really use checks that often?
I know this an old thread, but one that caught my interest as I just moved to the USA from Australia. As per the OP I had never written a check in my whole life, and upon arriving in the US I was surprised as to their proliference. In Australia pretty much all bills you receive can be paid in a number of ways:  For small amounts between friends cash is probably used most, but for larger amounts direct transfer is popular. Your friend/landlord will give you their bank account number and BSB number, which identifies their bank, and then you transfer the money in. We don't have a SSN like some other countries. Cheques are still used by some however, esp by the older generations. Now that I'm in the US initially I had tried to set up direct transfer to pay my rent however the bank has a $1000 daily transfer limit. I contacted the bank to get this increased however I was informed that this limit applies to ALL accounts at the bank. I asked how do people pay their rents with this low limit and was told that most people used cheques. (This explains the strange look I got from my landlord when I asked for their bank account details so I could pay the rent!) I now have some bills to pay here and I use online banking. You enter the biller's name and address and then the bank actually prints off a cheque and posts it to the biller on your behalf! My first couple of pays here were also cheques, which were the first actual "paychecks" I had ever received.