As Check 21 wraps up its first decade, its impact has been considerable, to the point where the Federal Reserve has but one site left for processing checks and at least one industry player sees the day coming when some bank or credit union out there might actually not accept them.

But, according to others, reports of the death of the paper check are greatly exaggerated to paraphrase Mark Twain.

There's no doubt that check processing has changed dramatically in the past few years, especially considering how little the process had changed since the 1890s, when Twain was still writing and the predecessors of Glenn Wheeler's company began exchanging cash letters in Texas.