Cash

Payment is made with cash far more widely than in the UK, despite the widespread use of credit cards, charge cards, personal cheques (checks) and travellers’ cheques.

Beware:

• All US banknotes (bills) are green, the same size, and have similar layouts (though a different president’s face appears on each denomination). Watch though for the new forge-proof $100 bills.
• You may come across the following sign: ‘Legal tender not accepted.’ It means just what it says. Payment is to be prepaid token or by card (credit or charge). It’s all part of the war against crime: no cash means there’s nothing to steal.

Personal Cheques

Personal cheques are far less convenient than in the UK. They are subject to more scrutiny and more delay than you have ever met before. Personal cheques can usually only be used locally within the area served by your bank. Unfortunately your bank may well turn out to be far more local than you might have expected from its name as ‘First National Bank of...’.

To use a cheque it must be overprinted with your name, address, telephone number, account number, and in some places your driver’s licence number. And you’ll need local identification (ID). And to write $11.60 write eleven and dollars.

What’s Id?

This usually means a driving licence at the very least. It’ll be asked for whenever you use any form of cheque, even travellers’ cheques! Don’t bother trying to explain to the clerk that travellers’ cheques are as good as cash if signed at time of use. You’ll be shown the sign that hangs everywhere ‘all checks must have local ID’.

The reason cheques cause so much hassle is quite simple. Cheque theft is endemic. Furthermore, if you leave a retailer with a cheque that bounces (and there are no guarantee cards to ensure payment up to a certain level) they’ll want to find you to cover the value of the cheque, plus their administrative costs, plus the penalty payment the bank charged them. You may see signs warning you that a bounced cheque will cost you $10. As current accounts cannot go into the red the possibilities of going into cheque bouncing territory is high if you’d been used to the more casual situation in Britain. When, in 1992, a hundred members of Congress were found to have bounced cheques a national scandal ensued!

Overdrafts are generally frowned upon. In some states you are guilty of a felony if you write a cheque for more than you have in your account: you are trying to spend money that is the bank’s not yours. Overdraft protection is available whereby an account likely to go into the red is topped up automatically (from another account or from a credit card).

Credit Cards

Credit cards are more widely used than in Germany, but, surprisingly not as widely as in the UK. Most stores and petrol stations will accept VISA or Mastercard but there are still enough places that won’t accept either card to make things tricky if you run out of petrol or need accommodation in out of the way places. Check beforehand if you can. Also, you may have to pay a surcharge for using a credit card.

Don’t be surprised if the clerk hands you back not just the credit slip top copy but also the carbon. A few years back there was a rash of carbon-based frauds. Retrieving used carbons from bins gave thieves customers’ credit card numbers, which were then used to order goods by telephone. Many people now expect to be offered the carbon for disposal.

Creditworthiness

Creditworthiness is different from what you’re used to. It is illegal in many states to go unexpectedly overdrawn. If the bank were to honour your cheque it would be giving you its own money, so you would have spent what doesn’t belong to you. If, on the other hand, the bank won’t honour your cheque you have just attempted to defraud the retailer stuck with the bouncing cheque. Either way you are deemed to be beyond the pale. And your creditworthiness will disappear, which may hurt you when it comes to buying a car, or just trying to obtain a credit card.

Credit card companies require an indication you won’t do a bunk and disappear after a shopping spree, so they may check your bank, your employer and commercially available bad-debts lists. If you are self-employed and live in a trailer then credit won’t be available.