Cheques To Be Paid In Via Smartphone

Hominu

For possible one-off services such as Subject Access Requests, where you send a letter and a cheque for £10, what will happen once cheques are abolished? Will people be forced to send expensive postal orders? (a £100 postal order costs £12.50) Send cash through the post? (Never a good idea) Ask them for their bank details and a reference number to track the payment? Send your credit card details?

1jim

I don't think we need to worry about cheques disappearing anytime soon, the bbc news stated that 10% of all personal payments and 25% of all business payments were made by cheque in 2012, as much as soon would like to see them disappear there is clearly a need/demand for this, if anything the smartphone payment of cheques may just make the use more attractive

innovate

1jim wrote: »

You might be right, it might be another 10 years or so before cheques will be a thing of the past . Not sure I will be around to witness it since I am now getting on a bit myself. I'll proudly go to my grave, though, saying I have not written a cheque in the last decade, and I am not planning on writing another one ever from hereon in. I can't see the next generation to revert to some ancient methods of exchanging money.

1jim

I'd imagine it's going to be longer than that given the investment that will have to be made in infrastructure to pay in cheques this way

I'm in my 30's and am fairly IT savvy, internet bank, smartphone, streaming tv radio etc but I still use cheques when needed. School trips, school extracurricular activities, kids swimming lessons, plumber/electrician etc all ask for payment using cheques, if they requested bank payment I'd do it that way but they don't. It also quicker to write a cheque than log in to internet bank and set up new payee and jumping through the security hoops (passwords/text or phone call verification/security code generator).

Gromitt

innovate wrote: »

I can't see the next generation to revert to some ancient methods of exchanging money.

For sure if I'm paying a family member of friend I'll pay them in some modern way such as Pingit, but if I'm paying the plumber, they prefer to be paid using cheques, and I'm not going to refuse as plumbers who accept card payments generally cost more as they are part of a bigger company.

So for me, it'll be the businesses that decide whether or not I'll be writing a cheque in 2014. I'm going to say that I'll write at least one.

robatwork

Mikeyorks wrote: »

That puzzles me. 'BACS' stands for Bankers Automated Clearing Systems and was set up, in 1968, expressly to develop electronic payments.

They had no relationship to cheques or cheque clearing - which was always conducted from Lombard Street (apart from a spell during the war) before moving for several years to the Nat West site at Goodmans Fields. Before finally moving out to Milton Keynes.

Well although this was probably about 18 years ago I don't think my memory is that shaky. I notice that BACS are still based in De Havilland Road which is probably where I was. I wasn't allowed to take in floppy disks - they were confiscated by security.

I am not making it up - there were vast piles of cheque paperwork being sifted, by hand. I was a little flabbergasted.

My guess is that they were sorting the cheques to then put into a machine that would then do the "automated" bit.

Perhaps someone who worked there could elucidate?

innovate

Some interesting stats: http://www.chequeandcredit.co.uk/files/candc/market_research/c&ccc_market_research_presentation_for_website.pdf

http://www.chequeandcredit.co.uk/files/payments_council/free_industry_statistics/payments_council_statistical_release_q3_2013.pdf

NFH

dtaylor84 wrote: »

Do the US have an equivalent to our Direct Debit scheme? As that basically sounds like a somewhat poor copy of it.

Despite being one of the most developed economies in the world, the US banking system is one of the least developed. The US has no high volume low value payment system similar to FPS or BACS. If you use online banking with a US bank to send a payment to a third party, it asks you not for the payee's account number and clearing code (sort code) but the payee's postal address. Your bank then puts a cheque in the post to the payee! Major well-known payees are intercepted and the payment is instead sent electronically by ACH, but the default is a cheque in the post. Rather than moving away from cheques like the rest of the developed world, the US prefers to develop new technology to process cheques.

NFH

A_Flock_Of_Sheep wrote: »

Perhaps one reason i like them is their existence still keeps people employed. You know in jobs. Those things Mr. Cameron wants everyone to have.

Using the same rationale, we should also encourage people to drop litter so that people can be employed to clear it up. It is of course wasteful to employ people to support inefficient practices when those people could be employed in a more productive occupation.

NFH

Hominu wrote: »

For possible one-off services such as Subject Access Requests, where you send a letter and a cheque for £10, what will happen once cheques are abolished?

The payee will simply publish their sort code and account number and an appropriate reference to quote such as "SAR" followed by a unique reference. There are plenty of ways such a payment could be achieved without resorting to archaic pieces of paper.