Thanks to new technology, the next time you write a check at a store, it will probably hit your bank account the next day.

The retail and banking industries, as of last week, are going with electronic check clearing. That means when a store accepts your check, it sends it back to your bank electronically, rather than mailing it. You may have noticed retailers using this already - Wal-Mart a while back started scanning paper checks and returning the original to the consumer. The debit is thus made electronically.

Moral of the story: if you have counted on that "float" when writing checks, don't count on it anymore. And as you might guess, there is no similar requirement that banks deposit money sooner into your account. All of this is possible because of a 2-year-old federal law known as Check 21, which drops the requirement that banks keep copies of consumers' original paper checks. One cool feature of the new law - from now on when you get your bank statement, you should see the payee's name listed for each check you wrote.