Britain's banks are waving a long goodbye to the humble check. The council that governs the country's bank payment systems has voted to go electronic. The council says checks will still be accepted until 2018, but many are concerned Wednesday's decision will hasten the check's decline.
In 1990, Britons were writing 11 million checks a day. Now, that number has fallen below 4 million, and it is plummeting fast as an increasing number of people pay online, or with plastic. So, the U.K. Payments Council argues its decision to phase out checks over the next nine years simply pulls the plug on a system already in terminal decline.
- NPR
With the number of forgeries, stolen and bounced checks, it makes since that they would eliminate the checks. Thus eliminating those efforts to try to collect the amounts of those checks, not to mention the insufficient check charges charged by their banks for a returned check that they accepted.
However, there are concerns that some have raised regarding this decision.
Britain, where the paper check was invented 350 years ago, has decided to phase it out by 2018. The Payments Council made the decision yesterday, prompting an immediate outcry from advocates for the elderly. The Financial Times quotes Andrew Harrop of Help the Aged as saying:
Without cheques, we are very concerned people will be forced to keep large amounts of cash in their home, leaving them vulnerable to theft and financial abuse.
The Payments Council needs to urgently come up with some practical alternatives to replace cheques or it will be condemning thousands of older people to extra worry, cost and financial insecurity.
Small businesses also are upset, saying that they depend on checks for many everyday transactions.
From banks’ point of view, though, checks require a costly infrastructure to support a shrinking volume. Check writing has declined rapidly in Britain, from a peak of 10.9 million pieces of paper per day in 1990 to 3.8 million per day in 2008.
- Saint Louis Post-Dispatch
According to the same article in the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch, the decline in the United States has also been pretty dramatic as consumers and businesses embrace debit cards and electronic payments. A Federal Reserve study said that U.S. check volume fell to 30.6 billion in 2006 from 37 billion in 2003. Research firm Tower Group predicted last year that US volume would fall to 17.9 billion in 2009.
Other people might look at this move and see it as another step towards the Biblical "mark of the beast," or what some have referred to as the "cashless society."
Still in Britain at least October 31, 2018 will the last time a paper check will be written in that country. Will we here in the USA see an end to the check? Who knows. Only time will tell. However, we still hold onto the one cent piece and $1 bill. Both of which, had the equivalents of replaced in Britain some time back. While this country is reluctant to use the $1 coin, in Britain they use the 1 pound coin (Britain's counter part) exclusively to the 1 pound note. So if that is any predictor then we won't make that switch here.
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