Even at 30 years old, Scott in some circles is considered old-school because he still writes checks.

Alaska is not yet a paperless society, but the trend is flowing more toward a culture of using plastic to pay for nearly everything.

By some estimates, Alaskans write about half the checks than they did even two years ago.

“Checks are becoming a thing of the past,” said Greg Gillquist, vice president of marketing for Cornerstone Credit Services.

First National Bank Alaska alone has seen a 27 percent decline in its check processing between 1998 and 2006. Between 2005 and 2006, Denali Alaskan Federal Credit Union saw a 9 percent decline in the number of checks ordered through its check vendor.

In reality, it's getting harder to write a check these days. Though numbers are hard to come by, it seems a growing number of businesses are refusing to accept paper payments. And why should they? Checks bounce, but the receiving business won't know it got a bad check for at least a week. Tracking the bouncer down to get cash is dicey.

Henry's Great Alaskan Restaurant opened in November, and has never accepted checks at its Anchorage location. Still, one customer wrote a $254 check and walked out the door before the wait staff noticed. Turns out the check was stolen, said owner Raymond LeGrue.

Bad guys don't have to steal checks anymore. With today's high-tech gadgets, the less-than-scrupulous can make checks that can fool even the experts, much less a harried storekeeper.

“More merchants realize that payments with debit cards have more credence than a paper check,” said Keith Fernandez, spokesman for Denali Alaskan credit union. “Merchants like that guarantee of that payment.”

When a merchant accepts a debit card, the money is moved right away from the consumer's account to the merchant's account.

A long process

The life cycle of a bouncing check can be a long one. Here's the rundown, according to First National Bank Alaska officials.

Polly Payer is a Bank Alaska customer and writes a Bank Alaska check to Molly Merchant. Molly Merchant has her business account at First National, and takes Polly's check along with the rest of her deposit to her First National branch. That evening, the First National branch delivers all their paper items, including Polly Payer's Bank Alaska check, to First National's processing center, located in Anchorage.

Polly's check is processed by First National along with the rest of First National customer Molly Merchant's deposit, and is credited to Molly's FNBA business account for the next business day. (Caveat: Since it's a local check below a certain amount, the credit is probably immediate.)

The next morning, First National takes all the paper items that are not drawn from First National Bank accounts to the Clearinghouse. At the Clearinghouse, First National returns to each financial institution their respective paper items — it returns Polly Payer's original check to Bank Alaska, and collects all the First National items brought to the Clearinghouse by the other financial institutions.

The financial settlement of the processed work is also exchanged between all the banks. That data is also sent to the Federal Reserve.

Now, Bank Alaska has customer Polly Payer's original check and processes that check against Polly's Bank Alaska checking account. Oops! Polly has overspent! Now the notification and return process begins, though the mail system.

Once the merchant gets the notice, it's up to him to track down the check writer to attempt to get paid. Some businesses pay companies to do this for them.

Stolen checks, bad phone numbers or a host of other events can prevent the merchant from finding the check writer, much less getting their money. And that hurts business.

“It's a crime to present a bad check,” said Bryan Jones, vice president of branch operations at Denali Alaskan. “But the time and money it takes to take something like this to court isn't worth it.”

Some business owners simply stopped taking checks. Trina Johnson, owner of La Mex, is one of them. La Mex stopped taking paper payments in January 2006. Over the years, Johnson spent several hours every month tracking down bad check writers.

The final straw came when a customer stopped payment on a $40 check.

“People are getting more creative in how they try to get a free meal,” she said. “Never in 20-some years of doing this, never have I run into a person stopping payment because he wasn't happy with the food.”

The real kicker: He probably paid a $30 fee to the bank to stop payment.

Getting out of taking checks can save time, but not necessarily money

Since she stopped taking checks, Johnson had ATMs installed in the restaurants so customers could have ready access to cash. About 4 percent of the total sales come through the ATM usage, she said. Henry's also has an ATM installed.

Debit card usage is increasing. Between 2005 and 2006, Denali Alaskan saw a 12 percent increase in the number of debit card transactions. First National's debit saw its transaction volume more than triple since 2000.

But for many former check-writing customers, credit is the way to go.

“People are saying that if they are going to spend the money, they want the (airline reward) miles for it,” said Cornerstone's Gillquist. “People who buy with a credit card typically spend more than when they buy with checks. That can be a huge increase for the business.”

It's also a huge increase in fees. “On the merchant side, we pay a lot more to accept that card,” said Johnson of La Mex. “Some days, 80 percent of my sales is from credit cards.”

Johnson said she pays up to $15,000 a year more in fees compared to check services. Some months, fees are equal to or more than the net profits, she said.

Credit and debit card companies, most notably Visa and MasterCard, offer a confusing range of choices for merchants. That results in at least 153 different rates, Gillquist said.

Here's a sampling: Businesses are charged fees, called interchange rates, for every transaction, generally a percentage of the value of the transaction. It's often somewhere between 1 and 4 percent, and varies depending on the type of business, transaction and card.

The interchange rates also vary depending on whether a credit or debit card is used, whether it's swiped or hand-entered into a system, among other issues. There are different fees for the various credit cards — awards cards (such as airline miles), signature cards (various rewards cards), corporate cards or just plain bank-issued credit cards. Rates may also change depending on the size of the transaction.

There are different rates for debit card buys using a signature or if the customer enters a PIN.

Each transaction is also charged fees that go to pay the merchant services provider and something referred to as a discount per item fee, which is paid to the credit card company.

The processing company that serves as the middleman for the transaction — taking care of the money transfers between the customer's and merchant's banks, and between the credit card company and the merchant — also charges a fee.

The equipment to accept plastic cards ranges from $300 to more than $1,000, depending on if the terminal is leased or purchased.

“I know more about credit card fees than I ever wanted to know,” Johnson said. “But it's worth it. The amount of bad checks was not huge, but it brought huge headaches.”