Cheque Guarantee Cards

EarthBoy

karatedragon wrote: »

Maybe they will upgrade the card when cheques are phased out. ..

Maybe, but if they wanted to offer an ATM card, they could have done this years ago, without having to offer a debit card facility. One of the accounts on which the card is available, the Albion Cheque Account, doesn't offer cash withdrawals at all, not even in branch, and you have to maintain a minimum balance of £2500 at all times. Less than this you have to settle for the Premier Current Account, but even then you need to hold the account for six months before they will consider granting an overdraft.

I think it's more likely that they will discontinue the cheque card altogether, if not the actual accounts.

karatedragon

EarthBoy wrote: »

the Albion Cheque Account, doesn't offer cash withdrawals at all, not even in branch, and you have to maintain a minimum balance of £2500 at all times.

Brilliant - Great Idea. More current accounts should be like this instead of peddling their overdrafts and encouraging people to get into debt.

EarthBoy wrote: »

Less than this you have to settle for the Premier Current Account, but even then you need to hold the account for six months before they will consider granting an overdraft.

Brilliant again. Nice to see some sensible and responsible lending decisions at last. We need more banks to be like this. If they were then the taxpayer would not have had to bail them out. Why aren't other banks this prudent when granting credit???

EarthBoy wrote: »

I think it's more likely that they will discontinue the cheque card altogether, if not the actual accounts.

I will ring and ask them about this.

peteuk

To recap for those who seem to have lost the point of this.

By Jun 2011 CGC will no longer be issued, by 2018 cheque books will no longer be issued.

All the major retail businesses have stopped taking cheques as payments, as have all the major petrol stations. The only cheques I write are for my kids school meals and takeaways (if I have no cash to hand)

I dont see the problem, if you have a CGC you a have a debit card. Even my Natwest solo account has a debit facility. Of equal note is the fact that they Nat West are changing to Visa debit from Mastreo. A debit card won't allow me to go overdrawn where a CGC will.

karatedragon

peteuk wrote: »

I dont see the problem, if you have a CGC you a have a debit card.

Not with the Leeds Building Society - They offer only a cheque book and guarantee card. NO Debit card whatsoever with their current account.

zppp

peteuk wrote: »

A debit card won't allow me to go overdrawn where a CGC will.

It can and does. Although you may have an 'online card' where most transactions are authorised and check your available balance, some retailers have floor limits for very small transactions where they don't check. Plus, if the retailers claim their payments a week after authorisation, it is completely possible to go overdrawn.

jamesd

noh wrote: »

Why would the rest be bothered with a scheme that only covers a few 10s of thousand people especially as it costs them more to process a cheque than a debit card transaction.

Because it's extra revenue at lower per-transaction cost than accepting cards. The fixed overhead cost of cards for the equipment is higher and if you're not taking many payments that way it's not cost-effective to pay those fixed costs.

peteuk wrote: »

By Jun 2011 CGC will no longer be issued

Not all banks are ceasing to issue cheque guarantee cards, though it's to be expected that the big banks who are ceasing it will portray it as a complete withdrawing of the facility.

peteuk wrote: »

by 2018 cheque books will no longer be issued.

Maybe. Too soon to tell whether that will be universal or just by the big banks.

peteuk wrote: »

I dont see the problem, if you have a CGC you a have a debit card.

Cards have higher fixed costs for merchants, so it's cheaper to take cheques if you don't do many non-cash transactions. I can use a range of debit and credit cards but that doesn't help much when the merchant has decided that for their business, those overheads make the per-transaction cost of plastic too high.

EarthBoy

jamesd wrote: »

.. and if you're not taking many payments that way it's not cost-effective to pay those fixed costs..

Exactly the same argument applies to cheques. If fewer people use cheques, they become more expensive for banks to process, so they will increase the charges to businesses, who will stop taking cheques as they are too expensive.

jamesd wrote: »

.Not all banks are ceasing to issue cheque guarantee cards, ...

As far as I know they are. Which ones have said they aren't?

pmduk

If cheques cease to be widely used the procedures for clearing them will become more costly. OK, some smaller financial institutions may choose to continue issuing them and/or guaranteeing them. Once they become expensive to process them you may find other banks reluctant to accept them.

Fiddlestick

peteuk wrote: »

I dont see the problem, if you have a CGC you a have a debit card.

Not always.

As recently as 2005 (when I worked in a petrol station) I was still seeing customers with a CGC that was separate from their debit card.

karatedragon

I will continue to use cheques until the bitter end. I recently paid my closing 35p T-Mobile contract bill by cheque. Not sure how much they made from that payment of 35p