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In the UK they haven’t been completely phased out, but I haven’t seen a cheque or a cheque book in the last 22 years. In 2019 only 51k paper cheques where used.

by orf 5y ago

In the UK they haven’t been completely phased out, but I haven’t seen a cheque or a cheque book in the last 22 years. In 2019 only 51k paper cheques where used. That is to say, other countries have already done it. 1. https://newseventsinsights.wearepay.uk/media/e1mdcljg/pay-uk-annual-summary-payment-statistics-2019.pdf https://newseventsinsights.wearepay.uk/media/e1mdcljg/pay-uk...

nicoburns 5y ago
The only times I've seen cheques in recent years are birthday presents from grandparents. I think they're still quite widely used by older people.
tialaramex 5y ago
You have, quite understandably, misunderstood that document. What's actually going on there are still about 250k paper cheques but that document was generated during the period when they were consolidating from an older system which actually cared about physical pieces of paper to ICS, an "Image Clearing System" ie banks scan the cheque and work with just image data. The American victims in the HN linked story already have image clearing, that doesn't fix anything except it saves the banks a small amount of money. The document shows volumes dwindling at two legacy paper cheque handling organisations C&CCC and BBCCL because those firms literally no longer exist today, the document was produced by Pay UK, their successor in practice, which replaced their paper processes with images. But end users still write and receive physical cheques, it's just that banks don't want to spend money on physically moving cheques. The actual volume of cheques stayed at around 250 000 per year, average value of a cheque about £1500 (so "Buy a used car" money, but not "Buy groceries" money or "Buy a house" money) and total value about £400M (or £400 billion if the obvious typographical error in the column headings is true...). I expect data for 2020 will be very different, due to the pandemic, but that document is for 2018 and 2019. Cheques are still gradually going away in the UK, I didn't write a cheque in the past five years and most of my accounts have no way to draw cheques against them. But that document isn't the evidence you thought it was.

by orf 5y ago

nicoburns 5y ago

The only times I've seen cheques in recent years are birthday presents from grandparents. I think they're still quite widely used by older people.

tialaramex 5y ago

You have, quite understandably, misunderstood that document. What's actually going on there are still about 250k paper cheques but that document was generated during the period when they were consolidating from an older system which actually cared about physical pieces of paper to ICS, an "Image Clearing System" ie banks scan the cheque and work with just image data. The American victims in the HN linked story already have image clearing, that doesn't fix anything except it saves the banks a small amount of money. The document shows volumes dwindling at two legacy paper cheque handling organisations C&CCC and BBCCL because those firms literally no longer exist today, the document was produced by Pay UK, their successor in practice, which replaced their paper processes with images. But end users still write and receive physical cheques, it's just that banks don't want to spend money on physically moving cheques. The actual volume of cheques stayed at around 250 000 per year, average value of a cheque about £1500 (so "Buy a used car" money, but not "Buy groceries" money or "Buy a house" money) and total value about £400M (or £400 billion if the obvious typographical error in the column headings is true...). I expect data for 2020 will be very different, due to the pandemic, but that document is for 2018 and 2019. Cheques are still gradually going away in the UK, I didn't write a cheque in the past five years and most of my accounts have no way to draw cheques against them. But that document isn't the evidence you thought it was.