March 10, 2019 – Faxing remains alive and well, especially in Japan and Germany — and in major sectors of the U.S. economy, such as health care and financial services. Countless emails flash back and forth, but millions of faxes travel the world daily, too.
Interesting related discussion on this phenomenon on Hacker News. Some insights:
Every single hotel that caters corporate clients in the USA still uses fax. We don’t get reservations through fax, but that is the best way to get credit card authorization. A lot of corporate booking systems are automated to send out fax for credit card authorization after they book the room online.
User newhotelowner
What exactly are you hoping to modernize (other than “technology A has been around longer than technology B”)? If it’s hardware, e.g. a physical fax machine with a physical line, and you want to get rid of that line there are existing options to do that with or without getting rid of the fax machine and with or without changing the workflow to some other technology stack like email.
User zamadatix
… a generic hotel e-mail is bombarded by phishing attempts and more generally “check this attachment (enclosed invoice)” or “booking confirmation check the attached image for credit card number” kind of letters, so, besides the time needed to open the e-mail, the e-mails are anyway a “risk”.
The worst that can happen with a FAX is that the “attacker” can make you consume some paper and printer ink.
User jaclaz