Mail delays due to the United States Postal Service (USPS) have now reached the business-to-business credit industry. Many companies using paper checks for payroll are reporting delivery delays as well as delays in small businesses' shipments.
Prior to the struggling USPS, news outlets began reporting delivery delays at the start of the pandemic in mid-March as employees started working from home, making it difficult to process payments and shipments. On Aug. 30, PYMNTS reported "delays in a wide range of deliveries are occurring, among them small businesses' shipments through USPS from sites like eBay and Etsy."
"Paper check production comes with a set of challenges that are antithetical to [these] crises," the article states. "It involves shipping the check over several steps of the process, and people need to be in the offices to do things like printing and packaging the checks."
In an effort to combat delays, some companies are using push payments to "make use of card and bank rails to move funds," while others adopt strategies such as blockchain and digital payment methods.
—Andrew Michaels, editorial associate