The (retail) US financial system is archaic and competes with Healthcare in regulation creep and backwardness. The first time I ever saw a check in my life was in the US.
Once I was buying a house, and my bank would write a cashier's check for free, but charged $50 for a wire transfer.
So I walked a $300K check from my bank two blocks to my escrow company to save the $50. The check must have been more expensive for everyone to handle (even at the bank, they had to wait for a manager to operate the special "check typewriter" - not everyone was allowed to operate it), but for whatever reason, it was "free".
When we bought our house, we also went the cashier's cheque route for the downpayment, but had a tremendous surprise: the cheque bounced when the lawyers tried to deposit it! I called the bank, and a manager met me at the door. He couldn't figure out what happened, but they re-issued the cheque and it all went through...
I once tried to speed up a transaction and got a cashiers check. Only to find out that a hold was placed on it because it slightly was more than typical for the account. The hold was for 7 business days which turned out to be 2 weeks (it was a Friday). Of course they couldn’t reverse the hold not giving me back the check. I said ‘don’t you think people will start walking around with cash if you keep doing this’ - they said yes, cash would be faster. Meanwhile spacex is building starship. And Suntrusts wire fees are $60 last time checked and take an hour to complete (in the branch because you pay extra to have that as an online feature). Also, did you ever try to amend a wire transfer because of a misspelled letter? That’s a procedure. What a waste of capital in a digital age.
So I walked a $300K check from my bank two blocks to my escrow company to save the $50. The check must have been more expensive for everyone to handle (even at the bank, they had to wait for a manager to operate the special "check typewriter" - not everyone was allowed to operate it), but for whatever reason, it was "free".