Target announced it will soon stop accepting personal checks from customers. Here’s why.

Target is telling its customers to wait more while paying less — but soon, its shoppers won’t be able to buy anything at all with a once-popular payment method.

The retail giant said in a statement that it will stop accepting personal checks as payment starting July 15. The change, which was reported earlier by Minneapolis television station KARE, will come after Target’s Red Circle Week, a sales event that ends July 13.

The shift comes amid a decline in the use of personal checks, a payment method that 9 in 10 consumers used at least once a year in 2009, according to a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. But today, only about half of Americans write checks at least once a year, and many of them are turning to digital payments such as Venmo, Zelle or PayPal, GoBankingRates found.

Target cited changing consumer preferences as the reason it stopped accepting personal checks as payment.

“Due to extremely low volumes, we will no longer accept personal checks starting July 15,” a Target spokesperson said in an email. “We have taken several steps to notify guests in advance to make the checkout experience easier and more efficient.”

Target will continue to accept cash, digital wallets, buy now, pay later services, as well as credit and debit cards, and SNAP/EBT cards, it said.

A few other retailers don’t accept personal checks, including Aldi and Whole Foods, the latter of which says it doesn’t allow checks in order to speed up the checkout process.

Even though fewer Americans are writing checks today, they remain popular among older consumers, GoBankingRates found in its survey. About 1 in 5 people over the age of 66 write multiple checks each month, while about half of those under 55 don’t write a single check in the entire year.