Target will stop accepting this old-school form of payment

By Erika Tulfo, CNN

(CNN) — Target will stop accepting personal checks from customers starting July 15, the latest retailer to stop taking the increasingly rare form of payment and to try to make checkout less cumbersome for shoppers.

The company cited “extremely low volumes” of checks in a statement to CNN.

“It’s hardly surprising Target has decided to stop accepting them,” said Neil Saunders, retail analyst at GlobalData. “That said, there will be small pockets of people, including more elderly consumers, who will lament that they are being phased out.”

The company said its stores will continue to accept other payment methods, including Apple Pay, SNAP/EBT, buy now/pay later services, Target Circle Cards, its store card, plus cash, credit and debit cards.

Around 61% of Americans are still writing checks, according to a 2024 report by Abrigo, a financial software solutions company. It also found that younger consumers, including Gen Z and Millennials, self reported writing more checks than older consumers from Gen X.

Target is not the only store to wave farewell to checks. Grocery store Aldi, for instance, notes on its website that it does not accept checks. Amazon-owned Whole Foods also does not take checks as a form of payment.

The decision to stop accepting personal checks comes as the latest move in a series of changes to the retailer’s checkout experience. It announced earlier in March that it would limit the number of items accepted at self-checkout counters to 10 and allow store management to set hours of operation for self-checkout machines to try to combat rising retail theft.

In the wake of declining sales reported earlier this year, Target also slashed prices on more than 5,000 items, including popular household staples, in an effort draw in inflation-wary customers.

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