With debit cards and credit cards becoming the most popular mode of payment, are people forgetting the concept of paying by checks? The truth is that there are a number of advantages of using personal checks for making your payments. For people who thought that the use of checks is becoming obsolete, here is some news. As per the information revealed by the Federal Trade Commission, there are more than thirty three billion checks written each year. This is a far cry from becoming obsolete!

Are you wondering why people are still using checks? Well, there are a number of advantages of using personal checks for your transactions. First of all, using checks will help you stay within your spending limits. Unlike credit and debit cards where the chances of overshooting the funds available are high, checks ensure you stick to your budget. Writing out a check will make you see the truth about the frivolous lifestyle you are leading and help you stay out of debts.

Personal checks come with check registers or duplicate checks, both of which can be used to track the payments that you have been making. Hence, unlike in the case of debit and credit cards, you will not have to wait for your monthly statements to see how you have been spending your money.

Just imagine your landlord asking you for rent. Or, your friend asking you to return the money you borrowed. You surely cannot use the debit or credit card in your wallet to make these payments! You will have to fall back on personal checks or cheap checks to repay the dues to them. Similarly, you would have to write out checks for the babysitter you hired, or to send a gift to your dear grand daughter who just turned 8! None of the cards can come to your help in such situations.

Finally, your check can be as unique as you. With the concept of personalizing personal checks or cheap checks online coming into play, you can design them to look the way you want. This adds some personality to the checks and reveals your personality.

(Source: http://www.waypointsworld.com/know-benefits-using-personal-checks.htm/comment-page-1#comment-27)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration is proposing that banks report all electronic money transfers in and out of the country, expanding its anti-terrorism requirements for financial institutions.

Officials at the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network said Monday that the new requirement would boost their ability to track the source of funding for terrorists.

Currently banks are required to only report cash transactions above $10,000. They are also required to keep records on all electronic transfers of money in and out of the country above $3,000 and provide that information to law enforcement officials if asked to do so.

James H. Freis Jr., the director of the Treasury agency, said that widening the reporting requirement would provide benefits with only a "modest cost to industry."

"This regulatory plan will greatly assist law enforcement in detecting and ferreting out transnational organized crime, multinational drug cartels, terrorist financing and international tax evasion," Freis said in a statement announcing that the proposed rules were being published in the Federal Register for public comment.

The proposed expansion of reporting requirements would not take effect until 2012.

Bank of America said in a statement that the proposed rule would be analyzed to determine the impact it will have on the bank and its customers.

The new policy would fulfill requirements under the 2004 intelligence law, which gave federal agencies greater authority to monitor potential terrorist threats.

Critics contend that requiring banks to report all money transfers involving foreign wire transactions would represent a massive expansion in government access to personal data.

"It is an extraordinary overreach by the U.S. government," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington-based organization on privacy rights. "This looks like a big electronic fishing expedition."

He said the proposal would raise serious concerns in many European countries where banking customers have greater privacy rights with regard to their financial transactions.

Under current requirements, financial institutions each year file about 14 million reports on cash transactions in excess of $10,000.

The proposed rule will not apply to credit card or ATM transactions, the most common ways that banking customers gain access to their funds when they are in another country.

Source:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Govt-to-expand-rules-for-apf-4256187386.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=7&asset=&ccode=

AP Business Writer Pallavi Gogoi contributed in New York to this report.