I had mildly wondered for the longest time why Americans loved their 'checking' accounts. Now I know: that's the common-or-garden-variety bank account!

In Australia, the bog-standard back account is called a 'savings account'. Financial institutions often add frills to these, such as ATM cards, but that's still the basic account. We don't, AFAIK, have a legal limit to the transactions. By contract, people only normally get a cheque account when they want to be able to write cheques. And up until a few years ago, you paid a government tax on every cheque written and on every transaction into a cheque account. So people preferred non-cheque accounts.

Wade.