In January 2019, the Board will discontinue publication of data on the outstanding amount of U.S. dollar-denominated traveler's checks of nonbank issuers. Dollar-denominated traveler's checks serve as an alternative to demand deposits and currency as a means of payment and therefore are included in M1. Nonbank traveler's checks have fallen steadily for many years to a point at which they represent an immaterial share of the monetary aggregates. The insignificant amounts no longer justify the burden of collection and publication of these data.
The date of the last reported value in the "Traveler's checks" column in tables 3 and 5 of the H.6 statistical release will be December 31, 2018.
Historical data for traveler's checks of non-bank issuers will remain available through the Data Download Program.
