Cheques being discontinued

[whqttt]

A friend of mine has been told by her employer that there are plans in the banking industry for the discontinuation of cheques.

I can't find anything on the web, nor can I see anyway that destroying one of the main ways small retailers have of taking money from customers would be a great move.

Has anyone else heard this, or is it a mad employer?

[Oneeyedvic]

The rumour has been circulating for years, In all proabbility, in the distant future, there will no longer be any cheques. The use of cheques has gone down a lot in the last 10 years due to the increasing use of both debit cards and payments by direct debit.

Eventually, cheques are bound to be stopped, but not quite yet!

[Loosehead]

I have'nt heard this, but I hope so. I'm sick of these plonkers paying with a cheque in the supermarket in fron of me! They even guarantee it with a debit card! why don't they just use a debit card?? Virtually every retailer can take Debit cards now (even the small ones, lol) so there are very few places where a cheque is actually needed, it is mostly when sending payment through the post.

[ursula62]

There was a notice in the Vue cinema last weekend saying they no longer accept cheques.

It costs the retailer more to bank a cheque than accept a payment by debit card, so I suspect that cheques are on the way out sooner rather than later.

Loosehead, I'm told by work colleagues that it is fairly common for them to use cheques in the supermarket at the end of an expensive month... if they paid by debit card it would bounce immediately, but cheques take at least 3 days to process, which gives time for the pay to arrive in the account.

[Loosehead]

I suspected as much. I'd just wait a few days, the embarassment of writing a cheque for �2.26 far outweighs the inconvenience!

[Oneeyedvic]

There are two other issues with cheques:

The first is the clearing process which can take up to 5 days depending on post. This annoys people. There is also the problem with counterfeit cheques - if I was to give you a cheque for some goods, you wait for it to clear (5 days typically) and tehn give me the goods. If it is a counterfeit cheque, it may be returned to you a month later (when the real account holder gets their statement).

The second issue is that an average cheque book contains 25 cheques and the 'normal' guarantee level is �100 - you could then report your cheque book lost and get a second book - ie someone can go overdrawn very easily an dvery quickly if they wanted to the tune of �5000.00 or possibly more, and there is nothing the bank can do about it. If it is by debit payments, they can quickly put a stop on the card!

Maybe it will be sooner.....

[smudge]

I've also read about the possible abolition of cheques.

I remember doing/overseeing the monthly creditors & payroll cheque runs for years & years at work - then onto the BACS system via a modem. It's a much more efficient operation.

[Hgrove]

In 1994/97 I worked for a company that had a branch in Amsterdam.  They were most surprised to hear that people here used cheques. We had a computer contractor who did a bit of work and was horrified at the thought our Amsterdam office wanted his bank details in order to pay him directly.  He just wanted a cheque.  He sounded like he thought we wanted to rip him off!  The Amsterdam office just could not understand why!

[stevie21]

Cheques won't be abolished until they're very rarely used by the public. At the moment, there are millions of people still using them.

[gavinbecky]

When I had my first job at 16, I worked in a newsagents. Someone bought a copy of The Sun each day (18p at the time) and paid by cheque every time.