I think this article just really highlights how badly the Canadian banking system needs to be modernized. Is it really that bad? I think I saw my parents use ch

I think this article just really highlights how badly the Canadian banking system needs to be modernized. Is it really that bad? I think I saw my parents use cheques a few times. That was in the nineteen eighties. Banks stopped accepting them in much of Europe decades ago. The cost of processing those became just prohibitively expensive and they offered no benefit whatsoever. There's no logical reason to be doing anything with cheques in 2022. That's just bureaucratic inertia and stupidity. You could turn this question around as well. What's the cost of cash? It's not zero. Cash logistics are expensive. Companies that hold cash need security, the cash needs transport, it needs to be printed and distributed, insured, etc. And there's the black economy which means losses in tax revenue. A lot of shops in e.g. the Netherlands went cashless so they make less of a target for armed robberies. Bank accounts are really cheap these days. Some banks charge for them but that's just greed. The nominal cost of tracking a few million integers in a computer is pretty low. That's why there are so many online banks these days. Creating a few billion bank accounts is not a technical problem. Same with transaction cost. There's no logical reason to charge multiple percents on every transaction. That kind of scam only works if banks have a monopoly on their markets, which of course in some markets is very much a thing. In market with competition, that cost goes away pretty quickly.