CHECKS AND BALANCES

Dec 28, 2009 Features / Columnists, Tony Deyal column

American spelling leaves me spell bound. If you do a spell-check on “cheque” the word gets redlined and you get “check”. Well, the British banks just did a check on the cost benefits of cheques in this age of debit cards and decided to put a check on cheques by October 21, 2018, just a little under nine years from now.

Why the stop-check? Elizabeth Fullerton of Yahoo in an article headlined, “Britain bounces checks after 300 years”, quoted Paul Smee, the CEO of the UK Payments Council, the body of bankers which determines payment policy, as saying, “”There are many more efficient ways of making payments than by paper in the 21st century, and the time is ripe for the economy as a whole to reap the benefits of its replacement.”

According to the article, “The use of checks has fallen drastically in the past 10 years as more consumers transfer money electronically, by direct debit or with debit and credit cards. Last year, around 3.8 million checks were written every day in Britain, compared to a peak of 10.9 million in 1990, the council said. It costs about one pound to process every check.”

However, there is an attempt to check, if not put a stop, to the move. Cheques are still a popular form of payment among elderly people, many of whom find the idea of using automated cash machines intimidating.

Vicky Smith, a spokeswoman for the charity Age Concern, citing that 6.4 million over 65s have never used the internet, stated, “Without checks, 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 British Federation of Small Businesses was also disappointed by the decision.

So who are happy? The banks are already ecstatic and are laughing all the way to their vaults because they will not lose. They now charge for cheques and for using their ATMs. Most likely they will increase the cost of using ATM machines. I discovered that a bank which has an ATM at the Marriott in St Kitts recently charged me a “Foreign Transaction Fee” of US$5.78 for using its machine.

Even though banks would love anything that means less work and more money, the people who would have a field day, especially were this measure to be introduced in the Caribbean, are the unscrupulous who prey on old folks or users of ATMs. They not only mug ATM users but have found ways of getting the unsuspecting to hand over their bank cards or to give out their PIN numbers.

It is true that learning to use cheques also has its problems, like the woman who got a cheque book and complained to her husband, “Just when I get a chequebook, the bank runs out of money. They sent back one of my cheques saying ‘Insufficient Funds’.”

Those of us who love the English Language would also suffer. My wife and I have a joint account- will we stop being cheque-mates? Worse, you can give a “blank cheque” to someone, but a blank debit card?

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CHECKS AND BALANCES

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