CrossCheck started in the check guarantee business way back in 1983. Checks ruled at the time, and nearly every merchant accepted them at the point of sale. Back then, in fact, many merchants did not take credit cards at all. This was due, in part, to the high cost of interchange and because processing a card transaction was much more complicated than taking a check. Merchants had to put a bulky multi-part carbon form in a knuckle-busting sliding imprinter (aka “Zip Zap machine”), and then sort out the forms and send them out for processing. There is a reason why it was called a “knuckle buster.” By comparison, taking a check was pretty easy, comfortable, and familiar to merchants, and consumers commonly wrote them for purchases at the store.
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