To pay rent, bills, send money to friends/family and other similar items, I put a name and bank account number into my internet banking and setup a scheduled transfer every month. It's free, and it works irrelevant of who is with what bank.
Why doesn't the US have this?
(Yes, I know the account number is printed on each check)
Perhaps something to do with the receiving account sharing its number, as opposed to the sending account?
Since buying a house, I now only write checks to my church. Everything else (mortgage, insurances, cell phone bill, utilities, internet) is either automated by systems owned by the provider, or the old-skool, bank-mails-a-check-to-the-inlaws-to-pay-the-wife's-phone-bill-each-month method.
The money is either transfered directly from the bank, or even mailed on your behalf as a physical check for those merchants who aren't set up to accept transfers like that. In either case, it's not necessary for you - the bill-payer- to write checks.
I noticed that when I lived in Canada, banks tend to pick up on technology pretty quickly compared to the US. I assumed that was because the Canadian banking industry is dominated by 5 (or is it 6) massive banks while the US has a few massive banks, then tons of smaller regional banks.
When a bank offers something new in Canada, the rest follow suit pretty quickly or they lose customers. In the US there just isn't the same competitive pressures. Or so my theory goes.
I would say its cultural reasons keeping people on checks.