submitted for clearance. In the United States, if the payee is equipped to process cheques electronically at point of sale (see: Check 21 Act), they would still take custody of the cheque and submit it to a financial institution, particularly to avoid any confusion on the part of the purchaser. Security issues One of the main advantages traveller's cheques provide is the replacement if lost or stolen. However, this feature has also created a black market where fraudsters buy traveller's cheques, sell them at 50% of their value to other people (such as travellers) and falsely report their traveller's cheque stolen with the company from which the cheque was obtained. As such, the fraudster gets back the value of the traveller's cheque and also makes 50% of the value as profit. The widespread problem of counterfeit traveller's cheques has caused a number of businesses to no longer accept them or to impose stringent safeguards when they are used. It is a reasonable security procedure for the payee to ask to inspect the purchaser's picture ID; a driver's license or passport should suffice, and doing so would most usefully be towards the end of comparing the purchaser's signature on the ID with those on the cheque. The best first step, however, that can be taken by any payee who has concerns about the validity of any traveller's cheque, is to contact the issuer directly; a negative finding by a third-party cheque verification service based on an ID cheque may merely indicate that the service has no record about the purchaser (to be expected, practically by definition, of many travellers), or at worst that they have been deemed incompetent to manage a personal chequing account (which would have no bearing on the validity of a traveller's cheque). Some purchasers have found the process of filing a claim for lost or stolen cheques is cumbersome, and have been left without recourse after their cheques were lost or stolen. Alternatives The widespread acceptance of credit cards and debit cards around the world starting in the 1980s and 1990s significantly replaced the use of traveller's cheques for paying for things on vacation. In 2005, American Express released the American Express Travelers Cheque Card, a stored-value card that serves the same purposes as a traveller's cheque, but can be used in stores like a credit card. It discontinued the card in October 2007. A number of