Like many Target employees, Kaitlin Sonday (@kaitlinsonday) often shares advice and anecdotes about working at the store on her TikTok account. She has 78,100 followers, 10.5 million cumulative likes, and a passion for making sure Target shoppers are as informed as possible. And her latest update to customers regards checks at Target.
“Fun fact, Target doesn’t take checks anymore,” she said in the clip. “I just realized that because my friend was on the register, we were trying to take a check. We were so confused and realized they stopped taking checks in, like, July 2024.”
She concludes, “That’s crazy.”
But should stores still take checks as payment? Several retail workers weighed in on this debate in the video’s comments.
Checks or no checks?
“We still take checks in the pharmacy at CVS, and I really don’t understand why,” one wrote.
“I used to work at DG back in 2021, and I was shocked then that we still took and processed checks,” another added. “For some reason, I thought stores stopped taking them a long time ago.”
While a third revealed they had a customer who was “really mad” about the change in policy.
The video amassed 38,100 views as of Saturday. Sonday didn’t immediately respond to the Daily Dot’s request for comment via TikTok comment and email.
@kaitlinsonday Target Fun Fact✅ #targetemployee #targetworker ♬ original sound – kaitlinsonday
Has Target really stopped accepting checks?
Sonday is right. As reported by The Associated Press, Target stopped accepting checks in July 2024, telling the outlet that there were “extremely low volumes” of people using checks as a form of payment in-store.
However, the store also emphasized that it was still committed to making the checkout experience as easy as possible, with options like credit and debit cards, “buy now pay later” schemes, and the Target Circle membership program. This automatically applies deals to people’s shopping.
“We have taken several measures to notify guests in advance,” the retailer added.
Indeed, according to the Federal Reserve, the amount of people using checks has been in sharp decline. In 2022, Americans wrote 3.4 billion checks—a number that might seem like a lot but is nothing compared to the 19 billion checks written in 1990. As Fortune points out, this has also led to the Federal Reserve reducing its check-processing locations. In 2003, the Reserve ran 45 check-processing locations. As of 2010, it runs just one.
The Daily Dot reached out to Target via email.
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