I am happy for you that you live in the blissful ignorance of thinking checks aren't a thing in Germany. You will curse the day you discover you're wrong.
They are exceptionally rare, to the point where many people have never seen one and fintech/neobanks simply don't support them at all. Unfortunately, some organizations/businesses do use them. They're particularly popular when some entity is required to pay you, knows your postal address, doesn't know your bank account, and doesn't care about your satisfaction with them. They just mail you a check and are done with it, making it your problem. As a bonus, they have a good chance of not having to actually pay you because you don't want to deal with the check or forget.
Of course, there is no electronic deposit either.
And while I'm talking about German companies above, US companies of course absolutely love doing this for the same reasons, meaning you have a foreign, USD denominated check. Hopping on a flight to New York and going to one of these check cashing places might be the easiest way to cash these, and could be comparable in cost to trying to do it locally.
I have received checks in Germany in the last decade, specifically when a health insurer refunded premiums but did not have bank details on file for me.
Sorry, not a native English speaker, probably missused "not a thing". I thought it would mean "not important" or "not something people use all the time" or "irrelevant".
“Not a thing” is a confusing idiom. It specifically means never happens, ever, but the idiom is frequently used in contexts where hyperbole is expected, so a literal translation accounting for the hyperbole might be something more like “I’ve seen it once, but it’s vanishingly rare”.
