It’s good to hear the federal Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, say cheques will be phased out in Australia. From the Guardian:
In a speech to be delivered to the Australian Banking Association in Sydney on Wednesday, Chalmers will say there has been a 90% decline in the use of cheques over the past 10 years alone but it remains a legacy payment method, while other economies have transitioned to digital payments.
In my shops, cheques not been sent or received for many years. In my software company, we’ve not sent a cheque for many years but we have several customers who steadfastly send cheques.
Cheques take more time to process.
I’ll be glad to see them go.
And, as for the whiners out doing the media rounds today saying the move would be ageist and discriminatory I’d say go find something real to whine about.
We have an LPO as well. How do you pay a $100k + GST tax bill without a cheque and no internet banking or access to the internet?? A lot of oldies still used cheques to pay their bills, especially in rural areas.
With Starlink and others, lack of internet access is no longer an argument.
Good to see that good ole Jim has not much else going on so his energy is better spent worrying about phasing out cheques and yep the poor oldies can pay $139 p/mth to pay bills – doesn’t seem right to me
I assume by Jim you mean the Treasurer.
I doubt he has much to actually do once the decision is made.
If you read the actual announcement (https://ministers.treasury.gov.au/ministers/jim-chalmers-2022/media-releases/modernising-payments-infrastructure-phasing-out-cheques#:~:text=We%20will%20also%20phase%20out,an%20orderly%20and%20planned%20way.) you will see that they will remove the legislative requirement for cheques and that the government will stop issuing cheques by 2028.
That’s five years away.
The trigger for the decision is in the statement: There has been an almost 90 per cent decline in the use of cheques in the last 10 years, with cheques now comprising only 0.2 per cent of non-cash retail payments in Australia.
Cheques are inefficient, like some of the old-school management tasks imposed on newsagents.
I’ll be very glad to see the end of cheques. The banks charge us $3 for every cheque we deposit and the average cheque amount our customers give us is $22
I will be glad to be rid of cheques too. I have some government department customers and some regular customer who pay by cheque. Shayne is right about the cost to bank them.
I was recently informed by the Credit union I use to access the Banking system (as my ANZ branch shut some years ago) to deposit cash and cheques that they will not be issuing any new cheque books form the 31 07 2023 and will not accept any cheques, dishonoring any received after 01 03 2024. On inquiry I was told this also included all the Retail Banks. This is happening now and 2028 as shown above.
Me personally, I have not issued or a written cheque for quite some years and now subsist happily with out them. I love the almost instantaneous reactions you can now have with Electronic banking especially with the Osko system. From day one in this Business I tried to use EFT in preference over cheques or other payment systems now over 12 years ago. The accuracy is far greater and easier when I prepare payments directly for up load from my accounting software system. I try to avoid Bpay (though Fairfax insist on it and even banned EFT for Payments Luddites), use as it has extra data entry where the potential for mistakes is greater. I am not a real DD fan though it works well and reduces work as it makes it harder to plan cash flow.
However, I have discussed the issue with some of my customers, all elderly and they and not happy. The complaints are :-
I do not own a PC or similar device that gives me access to the Electronic Banking system and Mobile telephones are a Phone and that’s it.
I do not understand the new newfangled modern systems nor am I even interested in learning about them.
With al the negative news you hear and see about criminals abusing and defrauding these systems how can you trust these systems.
The current system works well so why change something that is not broken (a matter for debate).
It is these elderly customers I feel for, though change has always been a part life. I not pay and fees for Banking cheques at the Credit Union though the delay in clearance of said cheques is a pain in the arse.