UK Wants To Phase Out Checks By 2018 796
The board of the UK Payments Council has set a date to phase out checks in a bid to encourage the advance of other forms of payment. They added, however, that the target of Oct. 2018 would only be realized if adequate alternatives are developed. "The goal is to ensure that by 2018 there is no scenario where customers, individuals or businesses, still need to use a cheque. The board will be especially concerned that the needs of elderly and vulnerable people are met," the Payments Council said in a statement.
Wrong (Score:5, Informative)
Spelling nazi... (Score:1, Informative)
It's cheque.
Re:How do people pay eachother? (Score:4, Informative)
> If I wanted to buy a car from somebody, how would I do it?
Transfer money from your bank account directly to theirs ?
No checks in Germany (Score:1, Informative)
Germany phased out checks / cheques 4 or 5 years ago....with no negative impact at all.
Re:Good Riddance (Score:3, Informative)
Re:How do people pay eachother? (Score:4, Informative)
Bank transfers, Mr. Conspiracy Theorist. Cheques have been obsolete in much of Europe for years, yet there's no crushing dictatorship preventing people from giving money to one another.
Re:Sounds Hard (Score:3, Informative)
A standing order.
> Also, what if I run over someone's bicycle, and I want to give him a blank check to pay for it? Or, more realistically, what if I need to pay an individual that I have only just met more money than I have in cash?
If you're going to give black cheques away to strangers, why not just give them your bank card and PIN?
As for the second situation, I'm sure your dealer can wait a day or two.
Re:How do people pay eachother? (Score:4, Informative)
In my experience, people generally will not accept a personal check for an automobile. Cashier Check or Money Order.
god damn yankees (Score:2, Informative)
we call em cheques
oh and "how do people pay each other?" = in kind
Re:Good Riddance (Score:4, Informative)
That said, pretty much all of the UK retail base phased payment by cheque out in 2008/2009, so its pretty hard to find a place that will accept one these days anyway.
Re:Sounds Hard (Score:4, Informative)
Here in Australia direct bank transfers pretty much fill the niche not filled by cash. The other person gives you their bank account details. You use your bank web site to transfer money to the other account.
Re:Good Riddance (Score:5, Informative)
Some acceptable alternative, that doesn't involve having a computer of a rather insecure mobile phone, will need to be devised before phasing out cheques completely.
Re:How do people pay eachother? (Score:5, Informative)
Bank transfers, Mr. Conspiracy Theorist. Cheques have been obsolete in much of Europe for years, yet there's no crushing dictatorship preventing people from giving money to one another.
Continental Europe here. Haven't used checks since the 80's, I didn't know they still existed. You used to put a bank transfer order in your bank's mailbox or mail it to them, but even that is something I haven't done this century, as it's so much more convenient to just enter a bank transfer order on your online banking web site.
Re:How do people pay eachother? (Score:3, Informative)
Just checked and my non-insolvent major US bank limits electronic transfers to random people's accounts to $2000. Which wouldn't even be enough to cover rent for many people, much less an car.
Re:Sounds Hard (Score:2, Informative)
With your system, can you give people money by only knowing their name, like you can with checks? I have to look up the spelling of my landlord's name every month in the school directory when I write my check (though I could set my bank to snail mail a printed check automatically every month). Do you need to know more than that, like the recipient's bank account number?
No, we can't, or at least not here in the Netherlands. You need a name, the town where the recipient banks and account number to transfer money. However, since most money transfers are the direct result of some sort of contract, it is normal that this information is provided on the correspondence of the other party and contract itself.
And yes, typical way of paying rent (for those who have their finances sorted out anyway) is to input a monthly transfer, often through online banking. Costs that fluctuate like energy bills etc. are usually paid through Direct Debit.
Heck, I'm 31 and I haven't ever used a cheque in my life. Quaint antiquated concept tbh. So United Kingdom banking establishment, welcome to the 1980's!
Re:How do people pay eachother? (Score:4, Informative)
I have never been charged for a bank transfer in the UK - and its a regular occurance between my group of friends, to pay for weekends away et all. Perhaps we are spoiled in the UK, I've heard too many horror stories and oddities about the US system, you guys just don't seem to have personal accounts setup as nicely as we do here.
A number of people are taking banks to court over bank charges, claiming they're unfair. If they ultimately get their way (a recent court defeat isn't the end of the matter), the banks aren't going to accept the loss of their biggest cash cow overnight. They'll come up with something else.
Expect to wind up paying a monthly fee for the "privilege" of having an account. Don't be too surprised to see per-transaction fees too.
(Just to clarify for our American cousins): Personal bank accounts in the UK usually accrue zero charges for daily use (taking out and paying in money, transfers between banks etc).
Where you do pay is if you exceed your overdraft limit by even one penny (something which is very easy to do when the bank automatically gives everyone a debit card, encourages them to use it and most businesses accept them without further charge). Do that and the bank will charge you for being over your overdraft limit, they'll write you a letter and charge you for writing that letter, they'll slap on another charge for every couple of weeks you're over the limit and they'll charge swingeing interest on the overdraft (including their charges). Each of these charges can be up to £25-30.
Do the same thing next month and you get charged again.
WTF is a check? (Score:2, Informative)
Checks? We haven't had those in wide use in Finland for at least 15 years. Every bank here and many local shops have secure electronic terminals where you can pay your bills, if you do not want to do it online. I have paid all my bills online for about 10 years now, and never had a single issue. We can also order from many Finnish-based online stores and make transfers directly from personal bank accounts, a direct debit transaction. No credit cards are needed in many cases and the approval takes no longer than a credit card transaction. Direct-debit from your own bank account is also possible in practically any shop using a so-called "bank card". In most cases, the credit cards issued by the local banks are also bank cards. When I ring up a purchase, I just tell the clerk to either charge the purchase to credit or direct-debit from my account. Easy, simple. I absolutely hated paper checks when I was living in the US. Keeping the checkbook balanced (which it never was), etc.
I don't understand this fear of online payment in the US. It seems most people in the US would gladly give out their credit card number over an unsecure landline to an unknown person/company at the other end, but paying bills online using a secure site is just too risky. Get over it and join the 21st century already.
As an American living abroad, it really frustrates me to see how totally awful some systems are in the US, when I have seen the alternatives available elsewhere. Don't get me started on healthcare, or mobile phone providers, or ISPs... or...
Re:How do people pay eachother? (Score:4, Informative)
Pay for the what now ? I can logon to my bank online, and given any sort code and account number transfer any sum of money I choose, (that I have available), for free. This is standard across any UK bank I am aware of. Lots of these types of transactions are instant now too, (or certainly very quick), some institutions still drag and you have to wait a day or so, but they are becoming fewer.
A lot of banks also have a great deal of large companies details stored for you, making it equally as easy to pay any bill.
Re:Small Businesses Will Take a Hit (Score:2, Informative)
Nope, small businesses just require people to transfer money directly into their account. Either pre-, before whatever it is, so they can verify it, or post- (invoice) if they can trust them.
Thats how small sports teams, private instructors, charities etc do it over here(Norway).
Since transfers are free and nowadays pretty instant or at worst a few hours delayed this is quick and easy.
And these days people now can transfer money via their mobiles so this is now even easier.
When I first moved to the UK in the 90s I was surprised they still used cheques, and now nearly into 2010s it is quite bizarre. Since the rest of Europe has been fine without cheques for 20+ years I don't really think they need to worry!
Re:How do people pay eachother? (Score:4, Informative)
Does that translate as "I can't remember my password and I keep getting locked out. Also, I'm so poor at managing my cashflow that I'm always overdrawn"?
You want to know what it actually is? A bank I used to use had an online security model which required you to answer with both a password and with a 'secret answer'. The 'secret question' was "What's the name of your first school?" - and it was the same for everybody. Ignoring the fact that now so many people are on Facebook and MySpace, that's hardly a useful security measure at all, there is a problem with punctuation. If you went to, oh, St. Paul's Roman Catholic Primary School, that could quite easily be Saint, St., or St, Pauls, Paul's, or Paul, Roman Catholic, Catholic, RC, R.C., Primary, Primary School or many other variants thereof. It turns out the bank was automatically stripping any characters that weren't [a-zA-Z\s] from the secret answer. Which is fine, except they don't tell you that. And you only have to mistype it twice or something and you are locked out. I didn't even mistype it - I have all my bank details in an encrypted text file, so I just copy and paste. If I write out the string, store it in a file, copy and paste it into the field to set it, and then come back a week later and enter it in the same field through copy and paste and it doesn't work, that's quite evidently not my fault.
Once they've locked you out from online banking because of their shitty software, it then takes them two weeks to unlock it. During which time, no transactions allowed. It took until the third time I'd been locked out of this process until they finally explained their byzantine string processing rules. And because it's internet banking, there is no other way of getting any money out. Except one. You can phone them up, and they won't do a BACS transfer for "security reasons" - but if you are willing to pay £25 they'll do a priority transfer. Think about that: you can't have money transferred slowly from your account for security reasons, but if you are willing to pay a fee, those security reasons disappear. I'm sure the fraudster intent on ripping off a savings account will pause in wait, wondering whether or not he wants to spend £25 of someone else's money in order to put a transfer through.
Sadly, stupid excuses about idiotic programmers and their inept handling of strings doesn't cut much ice with people one owes money to.
Of course, once it had cost me my second or third £12 bank fine, I took my business elsewhere. And, no, I generally manage my money pretty well - my student loan is about a third of the size of a lot of my friends, I clear my credit card every month, my laptop is pretty much my only luxury - bla bla bla.
My point was very simple: if you go a pound overdrawn and the bank then wham you with a £12 charge for it, the least they can do in return is to process some damn cheques without whining about how much it costs.
Re:How do people pay eachother? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wrong (Score:5, Informative)
This is a US site;
I always find this a slightly strange assertion, being a user from the UK. Yes the site was started by someone in the US, and a big chunk of the userbase is in the USA, but stories are submitted from a global audience and link to content that is hosted globally.
It's a bit like claiming the whole Internet is american, because well that's where it started, or that the web is british, because a british guy invented it. It's all a bit silly really.
Re:How do people pay eachother? (Score:3, Informative)
They will for a CHAPS transfer, but a BACS transfer is almost always free. I've never been charged using Lloyds, Abbey or Smile for a BACS transfer.
Re:Good Riddance (Score:4, Informative)
ATMs do charge access fees (yes not at the local branch)
Not in the UK, where this story is relevant. No banks in the UK charge ATM fees for anyone with a bank that is part of the Link network. The only ATMs that charge fees are the private ones that you find in pubs and (occasionally) shops.
Re:Good Riddance (Score:5, Informative)
Cow Cheque (Score:4, Informative)
One was once written on the side of a cow and left at the bank.
Just a linky [snopes.com] for the other like me who didn't know about this (fictional) story.
Re:How do people pay eachother? (Score:4, Informative)
There are usually some unreasonably high fees associated with bank transfers like that. Checks are virtually free. Should it cost $20-$30 to make every transaction in the future when you could have wrote a check for free?
In (Continental) Europe, this is different. Money transfers are (nearly) free, while banks charge a substantial amount to process a cheque.
Re:How do people pay eachother? (Score:3, Informative)
In the US, yes. In Europe, no. I'm not completely sure for other countries, but in the Netherlands bank transfers are done at no extra cost, as is money withdrawal from a debit card.
Re:Wrong (Score:2, Informative)
You didn't read the FAQ, did you?
Slashdot seems to be very U.S.-centric...? [slashdot.org]
Re:How do people pay eachother? (Score:3, Informative)
What kind of transfer are you trying to do?
I know that Co-op, Natwest, Halifax, HSBC, Lloyds, Barclay's, Nationwide, Alliance+Leicester and some Belfast bank can all transfer between each other (online) for free, with personal accounts. (BACS, I think they're called.)
(I don't have accounts with all these, but four of them are from flatmates' transferring their rent to me before I transfer it to the landlord (and pay the bills, too) and the rest friends when I owe them money for gig tickets etc.)