You inspired me to check, and I discover that the last time I wrote a cheque was in 2007, to pay for a German course at the Goethe Institut. (Now, I believe, even they take credit cards.) It does seem like an out-dated vehicle to me. When I lived in France in 2004/2005, it was pretty common for people to pay by cheque in grocery stores. It drove me crazy because the documentation required took forever, and the cashiers seemed to all suffer from short-term memory loss, since they greeted each cheque as if they had never seen one before, even though the previous customer had used on.