Save the Cheque!

ahai1

They only make money because people cannot manage their budgets properly. A lot of the money is made in merchant fees and other business things.

I have nothing against people who abuse the overdraft paying hefty fees. I will switch to a basic bank account if this happened.

Martin Lewis is wrong we have free banking but we have people who abuse free banking now getting money back which the banks levied on them.

brightonman123

one posible advantage of cheques (business ones anyway), is that often two signatures are needed..

but it only takes one person to hack into a firm's bank / payment system..

BuddyBonthenet

ahai1 wrote: »

They only make money because people cannot manage their budgets properly. A lot of the money is made in merchant fees and other business things.

I have nothing against people who abuse the overdraft paying hefty fees. I will switch to a basic bank account if this happened.

Martin Lewis is wrong we have free banking but we have people who abuse free banking now getting money back which the banks levied on them.

No, they don't. Banks invest some of our money in securities that earn them interest and they also lend some of our money and earn more in interest on these loans than they pay us.

rb10

brightonman123 wrote: »

one posible advantage of cheques (business ones anyway), is that often two signatures are needed..

Online banking could be set up so it needed the separate authorisations of two holders (each on their own login) before a transaction could go out.

brightonman123 wrote: »

but it only takes one person to hack into a firm's bank / payment system..

Just as it only takes one person to forge a signature.

ShelfStacker_3

rb10 wrote: »

Just as it only takes one person to forge a signature.

You forgot to mention that the one person who forges the signature doesn't, in many cases, have to be particularly skilled. My signature is stupidly easy to forge, as are many others'.

Side note, but it's infuriating as hell when people go "oh, it changes all the time..." Well, that's lovely, but it makes having a signature fairly pointless then, really, doesn't it?

Inactive

ahai1 wrote: »

I see no reason why we should pay.

Nor do I .. The banks would only use the money to pay even higher bonus's to their staff.:rolleyes:

Extant

simongregson wrote: »

My brother runs a small business and does not accept cards. The reason being that to accept them he would have to rent a terminal, this seems to be about £20 per month + a setup fee. Being as he has no passing trade etc. there is no advantage to him accepting cards. I am sure he would accept BACS transfer for payments, but none of his customers have ever asked for this, probably because most of them will find it more hassle to find out his account details, go home, log onto internet banking and pay him. They either pay cash or cheque. Cost of processing these is not an issue as they are high value/low volume.

I am sure he would accept debit cards and perhaps credit cards with a surcharge if the bank were willing to charge less for the rental and set up. I think many small firms are in the same situation.

Incidentally, he has never had a cheque bounce. There is more trust I feel between customers and smaller businesses (plus he knows where they live!)

There are actually places that will give you terminals for free or a one off fee already. But the advantage of cheques going is that everyone would be using transfers or cards, which would increase competition, and thus lower the prices (or even eliminate them entirely in some cases, I'm sure).

Extant

Paulgonnabedebtfree wrote: »

Well it is free to me as I stay within certain parameters. I don't expect bells and whistles but I do expect it to work.

That's actually what I was getting at.

So tell me please, do Barclays show the payment references in real time on their business accounts? I would have no problem paying a bit for this if this info was available to me - so long as I could bank out of hours and the charges weren't extortionate.

Yes, of course. Without wanting to sound too snide, any real bank does - Abbey have just spiraled in the past few years with ever poorer IT systems. As an Abbey business user, I'm sure you'll remember the entire thing failing last year!

Also, there are plenty of places you can get business banking for free, it's not just an Abbey thing. Barclays, HSBC, etc. all offer it on similar terms to Abbey (no counter service, blah blah).

Extant

brightonman123 wrote: »

one posible advantage of cheques (business ones anyway), is that often two signatures are needed..

but it only takes one person to hack into a firm's bank / payment system..

If you think it's easier to hack into a computer system than it is to forge a signature, I can only assume you have never used a pen before.

Extant

Inactive wrote: »

Nor do I .. The banks would only use the money to pay even higher bonus's to their staff.:rolleyes:

I have started to call these "Inactive roll eye moments."

I personally like to believe you copy them from the pages of the Daily Mail, choosing to completely ignore the fact that the average bank worker's salary is just £16,000 and the average "bonus" is £2000 a year and directly related to their own performance.

(Source? Unite the Union. And it doesn't mean that the average worker gets both salary AND bonus.)