The Dallas Morning News: Debit and credit taking over checks as preferred consumer payment methods. Check writing has declined sharply since 1995. The Federal Reserve estimates that 49.5 billion checks were paid in the United States in 1995; that figure dropped to 36.6 billion checks paid in 2003, according to the most recent Fed studies. The growing popularity of plastic is the biggest factor. Between 2000 and 2003, the number of debit-card transactions nearly doubled, from 8.3 billion to 15.6 billion, and the number of credit-card transactions jumped from 15.6 billion to 19 billion. Increasingly, checks are being converted into electronic payments by merchants. Converting checks to e-payments allows merchants to get paid faster, and it may help reduce the number of insufficient-funds checks. Processing checks electronically is also cheaper. In 2003, about 8.9 billion converted checks were reported, accounting for about 11 percent of all non-cash payments.
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