An interesting development in the financial world unfolded yesterday when the UK announced that they are phasing out the use of cheque by the November 1^st, 2018. The theory beind the move is that cheques are expensive to process, vulnerable to fraud and that their usage has dropped due to electronic banking at a staggering 6% a year since 1990.

Cheques are currently the most expensive type of payment that a bank processes; generally costing around the banks around $433 million, and it isn’t just the banks that are hurting. The expense associated with cheques has also been impacting government departments and large corporations, who will benefit from cost savings by switching to alternative forms of payment.

Overall, the chequeless society is making headlines from the economic, technological and environmental impact that the move will create. Will this mean a shift towards a paper less society? What about people who are technologically inept? Will Canada follow?

In my opinion, the move from cheques to wired transaction makes sense and I really do believe that in the future, most countries will follow the UK in phasing out cheques. Like most people, I believe that cheques can be inefficient source of receiving money and is a system that largely relies on trusting the other party. Who hasn’t sold something before and received a cheque only to discover that it bounced? Now imagine that you are a large business selling product to numerous customers and bounced cheques can become an enormous financial liability.

I do understand that they are some people who live to far out of town or in a valley, like my self, that are unable to receive internet service or individuals who do not use a computer, who are very concerned about the switch. It is important to remember that 2018 is still 8 years away giving consumers and technology plenty of time to develop and master new skills.

I also believe that moving away from cheques will result in faster transaction time as well better movement of money. Who hasn’t cleaned out a drawer before to find a stale dated cheque, or miss placed one for a week or two? Electronic transaction will remove the lag time from the postal service and clutter desks, resulting in a more efficient indicator of the movement of money.

And well there are a lot of angry people out there blogging about the transition, I personally think that change is good and that eventually most of the world will follow in the UK’s ground breaking foots steps. So for all you cheque lovers out there trying to find a happy spot in all this, removing cheques will save the banking system over $430 million dollars a year, so maybe they will lower service charges. Okay not likely, but ready or not get ready for a chequeless society its coming to a bank near you.

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