N.C. Whole Foods Stores Stop Accepting Checks

Whole Foods Market customers hoping to use their checkbooks at the high-end grocery this week were told to find alternative ways to pay. All five Triangle locations stopped accepting checks Monday in order to limit the amount of customer information the grocer collected and to increase checkout speed, said Whole Foods spokeswoman Teresa Jones. The policy is already in place at many of its 300 U.S. stores.

"It's a noticing of a trend and an opportunity to take advantage of a trend," Jones said.

It's true that check users are a dwindling minority in the retail world, but few stores have outlawed the payment method.

There's no discernible trend of retailers adopting no-check policies, said J. Craig Shearman, a vice president at the National Retail Federation. The trend is actually the opposite. "What (retailers) prefer most is cash or checks," Shearman said.

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