Check acceptance, as an industry, is not a new one.

One could say that check guarantee provides a "stop-gap" role in the early part of the check acceptance stream.

If your business accepts personal checks, establish a detailed check acceptance policy to help identify and avoid bad checks.

"This was weaker than I expected," said William F. Ford, the senior economic adviser for the service, which studies check acceptance.

RediCheck made its services available on the Internet in the fall of 1995, making it one of the first providers of online check acceptance.

While electronic check acceptance remains one of the company's service offerings, iTransact today is primarily a provider of credit card payment services to merchants.

Telecheck Services, for example, a Houston-based check acceptance company, reported that the first 17 days of the shopping season resulted in a 5 percent sales gain over 1995.

Telecheck Services Inc., which monitors check acceptance, reported that sales jumped 5.7 percent on the day after Thanksgiving from last year, based on the dollar volume of checks written by consumers.

Merrill Lynch and Charles Schwab use banks in Pennsylvania and Ohio, respectively, for their asset management accounts; representatives of both firms said check acceptance had not been an issue with their customers.

The Short Hills, New Jersey store seemed out of place in the very upscale mall, and customers resisted what were seen to be the store's more rigid policies concerning check acceptance, inter-store transfers, and refunds.

On another cautiously positive note, sales in stores open at least a year rose 2.4 percent on Friday compared with sales on that day a year earlier, according to TeleCheck Services, the world's leading check acceptance company.

First Data - Founded in 1969, First Data currently employees 33,000 workers and has become one of the nation's largest payment processors, specializing in credit card processing, ATM processing and electronic check acceptance.

On the first holiday shopping weekend after Thanksgiving, sales nationally were up only 1 percent over the same weekend last year, according to Telecheck Services in Houston, the world's leading check acceptance company, which measures check writing in more than 27,000 locations each year.

At the same time Telecheck Services, the check acceptance company, found that sales rose 2.2 percent this season, and the only two regions that differed greatly from that average was the Southwest, where the company said check writing fell two-tenths of 1 percent, and the Southeast, where check writing rose 4.6 percent from 1996.