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SALT LAKE CITY — Customers at Utah's state-controlled liquor stores soon will no longer be able to write a check to pay for their purchases.
Sept. 30 is the last day that Utah Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control stores will accept checks, something cashiers have been doing since the cash-only policy was dropped by the 1995 Legislature.
Officials have decided the time and money spent processing checks is no longer worth it, given that in the budget year that ended June 30, only 9,505 checks were written for just over $500,000 in an agency with sales of more than $420 million.
"We have millions of transactions every year," said Cade Meier, the department's deputy director. "Basically, we're saying there's just not a lot of check writing going on."
Meier said the change in policy means the state won't have to continue to replace check processing machines next to cash registers in each of the state's 46 stores that cost up to $2,000 apiece.
Most of the stores took in fewer than 200 checks in the past budget year.
"We made a decision working with the (DABC) commission that we would need to move on," Meier said, although licensees will continue to be able to write checks because those do not require the same processing.
Signs are being posted in liquor stores to let customers know checks will no longer be accepted after Sept. 30. Meier said clerks have told him they're making sure the longtime customers who write checks are aware of the change.
Still, he said, the new policy may be tough on some.
"We're disappointed in that because we want them to be able to come, and to partake, and make a purchase in a responsible way," Meier said. "Unfortunately, it's not a cost, though, that we can continue to support."
Credit cards are by far the favorite form of payment at state stores, he said, with transaction fees paid adding up to some $470,000 monthly, part of the agency's operating costs.
But until the law was changed 22 years ago to allow for checks and credit card sales, customers had to use cash to buy the liquor, wine and higher alcohol content beer sold only by the state in Utah.
The cash-only requirement was seen as discouraging problem drinkers from going into debt or even writing bad checks. Backers of permitting checks and credit cards said they wanted to make shopping more convenient.
