The North Wind

Issue date: 6/8/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Jeff Kitson Junior marketing major Chase Kalena uses his credit card to make a purchase at the NMU Bookstore. A growing number of students are usng credit or debit cards their primary money source. [Click to enlarge]

NMU senior Jessica Compton, a speech pathology major, remembers trips to the grocery store with her mother, Virginia. After walking systematically through the aisles of produce and packaged goods, they would push their laden cart to the checkout lane. Then, out came the checkbook. Peering over the counter, she watched her mother's pen dance across the paper. With a final flourish, her fingers slipped between the check and the carbon copy, finally tearing out the paper.

"I remember she could write super fast," Compton said.

For children in the future, however, the ritual of watching a parent write a check at a store will be replaced with a plastic card swipe, as more consumers switch to debit card use.

First beginning to decline in the mid-1990s, the number of checks written in the United States dropped from 41.9 billion in 2000 to 36.6 billion in 2003, according to a Federal Reserve Board report. At the same time, debit card payments, which also come directly out of a checking account, increased from 8.3 billion to 15.6 billion. Although debit card payments have increased at a high rate for decades, electronic payments have only recently begun affecting traditional check payments, according to the Federal Reserve.

Today's student population is one of the first generations to be brought up entirely on electronic payments, bankers said.

"I don't think most students are familiar with how to write out checks now," said TCF Bank NMU branch manager Brad Christian. TCF operates out of the University Center with only 10 percent of its accounts not belonging to students or faculty.

All accounts at TCF come with both checks and a debit card, however, most account holders choose to use the debit card, Christian said.

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