Do Americans still use things like cheques?! How can a country which has smartphones still also use cheques? Perhaps soon they'll discover online banking - which most English speaking countries have had for around 10 years!
Our payment system in this country is very antiquated for many reasons. We don't have chip-and-pin for our credit cards because the retailers' lobbies are against it (they don't like the cost of upgrading their equipment, and credit card companies are on the hook for most fraud, not them). Our interbank payment systems are still designed for the 20th century and the 10,000 mostly small banks we had back then, all connected through snail mail and the Federal Reserve check clearing system. Now we're down to about 7,000, which is still a lot more than most countries. Checks were fine in that era.
At least the US finally updated the check system, which enables banks to accept digital scans of checks. That is what makes services like this possible.
I've lived in the UK, so I'm aware of how easy it is to make person-to-person payments electronically. We're about a decade behind here, since it's just getting started.
