The Federal Reserve Board is accelerating its shutdown of paper-check processing centers again.
The acceleration was announced Monday, nine months after the central bank said that by 2011 it would have only four full-service check processing centers — in Atlanta, Cleveland, Dallas, and Philadelphia — and would use other centers around the country only to capture check images for clearing or to print substitute checks for banks that could not clear images.
On Monday the Fed said that it would complete that transition by early 2010, and that seven full-service sites would be shifted to the narrower roles of scanning or printing this year, instead of the five that were previously scheduled.
The Fed reported in December that 30.6 billion checks were paid in the United States in 2006 — versus 37 billion in 2003 and 42 billion in 2001 — as Americans have increased their use of cards and online payments. Since 2003 the Fed has reduced the number of sites where it processes checks by nearly two-thirds, to 18.
"The transition in consumer and business preferences from paper checks to electronic payments is moving at a very brisk pace," Gary Stern, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and the chairman of the central bank's financial services policy committee, said in a press release.
