News flash from the Federal Reserve. Sorry, it's not a drop in interest rates. It's the fact that Americans now make more payments electronically--by credit or debit card or via the Internet--than by paper checks. In 1995 consumers wrote 49.5 billion checks. By 2000 that number had dropped 14% to 42.5 billion. Meanwhile, online bill payment is now used by some 12 million households, up from 10 million in 2001.
What's driving the shift? Over the past year, electronic payment got a boost when the anthrax attacks elevated fear of using the mail, says Bill Nelson of the Electronic Payments Association....
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