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.
Good Riddance (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll shit bricks when they outlaw cash.
Re:How do people pay eachother? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you have stumbled upon the point.
You can't do a paypal or credit card transaction in person with a stranger without the blessing of someone else (paypal or visa). And if you are using a significant amount of cash, they will presume it is a drug deal or money laundering or something nefarious. Large cash transfers are already defacto illegal in the US (see what happens if you get pulled over and have 50,000 usd in the passenger seat) although I can't speak for the UK.
Governmental and corporate power is maximized when citizens can not do meaningful business amongst themselves.
Re:How do people pay eachother? (Score:5, Insightful)
That is precisely the point. One man's crime is another man's freedom.
You might not think I should be able to sell my car, on the spot, provided I've got the pinks, to someone who likes it at the drag strip on a whim.
I'll need a phone so I can ask someone else for permission first. To use my own money.
Maybe you think that is nefarious. I think freedom to conduct business ought be a fundamental right.
Re:In ong run should just switch to digital cash (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How do people pay eachother? (Score:3, Insightful)
why should an electronic transaction be more expensive than a pen-and-paper order to a bank clerk to perform te exact same electronic transaction?
Re:Wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
But it's a story about UK banks phasing out something, and the something which they're phasing out is "cheques". When UK banks talk about "checks" they're talking about the precautions they take against money-laundering and the like. I don't think they're going to phase out those any time soon.
There will never be anonymous digital cash. (Score:5, Insightful)
We have cryptographically secure algorithms for anonymous digital cash.
But who wants that? The little people? Hah.
There are only two institutions that could create and support an anonymous cash-free financial system: the government and big financial institutions. Where is a motive for either one that is more juicy than the possibilities of being able to track every monetary transaction you engage in?
Privacy is a tool of the people to evade control by those with too much interest in their day to day lives. No one with power wants to give that to the common man, and if some of us little people got together to try to build a network for handling cash out of the government's and the banks' eyes, it would be tied up in anti-terror laws faster than you can say, "Hawala."
Honestly, cash is something that would not be allowed to be invented today if it didn't already exist and wasn't too hard to get rid of.
Money spinner (Score:4, Insightful)
Personal cheques are a purely a cost to the average bank, shuffling paper and checking signatures does not make them scads of cash. They'd dearly love to replace them with credit cards for which they get to charge an annual fee to the card holder, monthly and annual fee plus a percentage commission from the merchant, and any interest accrued by the card holder at the usual inflated rates, and all riding on the back of a process that is essentially automated (reduced staff costs). Even the direct deposit substitute is a good money spinner with limited numbers of "free" transactions per month before fees kick in, and charges for daring to use an ATM. What's not for a bank bean counter to like about this?
Once the cheques and bank notes are gone ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Every transaction will be traceable by the "benevolent" power-that-be; not for anything but the purest of motives, of course.
Just from the absolutely ludicrous statement "... the board will be especially concerned that the needs of elderly and vulnerable people are met", which anyone with enough functional brain cells to form a synapse can tell is pure propaganda, you should know that there is another agenda entirely.
Checks? (Score:1, Insightful)
Those paper slips that serve as criminal plot points in American movies? They're real?!
I thought they were like rotating fireplaces, rings with poison and cars that explode when they crash.
Re:Good Riddance (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Maybe we could write a little note with our bank details on instructing the bank to pay the small business? He could then take it to the bank and get cash - or even just put it straight into his account.
Re:Once the cheques and bank notes are gone ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Good Riddance (Score:4, Insightful)
I would rather see the end of cards, what with people who can't even remember an insecure and hopelessly short 4 digit pin, or paying for a newspaper - on a card, or the communications breakdown between cashier terminal and the bank. These people all drastically slow down the "10 items" lines in a store, there should be cash tills only.
Now credit and debit cards are coming out with contactless technology, so it will be even easier to steal money from your bank account, all without your knowledge, and as it's a small payment, the bank will do noting about the fraud.
Re:Good Riddance (Score:3, Insightful)
Bank to bank transfers are also widely available and free of charge.
If you think about it, you'll see why this makes sense - cheques require manual validation, direct transfers don't. Cheques require physical items moving around, direct transfers don't.
I'm afraid it really is only backwaters that hasn't kept up with the times. This might include a lot of the US though I guess...
Re:Good Riddance (Score:3, Insightful)
Cards slow down express lanes? You're kidding right?
I swipe my card while the checker is scanning. When he's done it prompts me to confirm the price. I hit yes. He prints a receipt. No change. No counting. Instantaneous.
Re:WTF is a check? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good Riddance (Score:5, Insightful)
What if you don't have an immediate access to electrons. Like say you are in one of the holes in AT&T data coverage that Verizon likes to show on a map? We still need a good old way to arrange offline money transfer between two people.
Re:Wrong (Score:2, Insightful)
Surely, though, if this truly is an american site they should have spelt it as 'faze out' or some such.
Re:Gold (Score:3, Insightful)
Good riddance! Welcoming a cheque-free world (Score:5, Insightful)
Having lived in Switzerland for a while and experienced the cheque-free banking system there, I can say that cheques suck on so many levels. Handing or mailing someone an IOU in the form of a cheque is stupid when you consider the alternative.
In Switzerland, and I believe in most of Europe, payments are pushed rather than pulled. The receiving party sends the paying party a standard slip with the receiver's account information and amount being billed (or the payer could fill out a blank slip manually). The payer feeds the slip to his own bank's ATM and authorizes the payment. Or, he keys in the information to his bank's e-banking website. Alternatively, they payer can take the slip to any post office and pay with cash. The transaction clears the same day.
Compare that with a cheque-based system:
There are only two advantages of cheques that I can think of:
In summary, a cheque-based banking system is so completely backwards and broken, it's amazing that such a system could exist in the modern world.
Re:Good Riddance (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How do people pay eachother? (Score:1, Insightful)
There's another benefit to making it impractical to move around large amounts of cash untraceably, though, that you may not be aware of. It makes it almost impossible to bribe police. (Politicians are still corrupt, though.) And that one advantage pretty much makes all the disadvantages worth it, because as bad as it is for the government to have that kind of power over transactions, having police in the pay of whatever group can afford them is so much worse we actually have more freedom this way.
Translation (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Checks and transfers (Score:3, Insightful)
At the risk of overposting in this thread, never accept a normal check for a car. You want a money order or a bank certified check (which really isn't a check at all). Accepting a normal check for a car is just asking for fraud.
Re:Good Riddance (Score:3, Insightful)
Good luck buying a house with that cash. The drugs squad would like to have a word with you...
Re:Good Riddance (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course you can do what many people do any just transfer the money from your bank to theirs. Which is all a cheque is but much faster.
Re:Wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
I think that as English people from England, know how to speak and spell English. Please don't correct us with your bastardised American or International <airquote>English</airquote> :)
Re:Good Riddance (Score:2, Insightful)
Tomorrow belongs to you, eh comrade?
1. If you shop in small, independent stores, you may be doing a favour by giving exact change.
2. Either way, you are certainly doing a favour by paying in cash: no transaction fee.
3. Lines are usually slowed down where I shop by gossip, which involves extra minutes rather than seconds. This is dependent largely on whether shopkeep and customer know each other. Nattering teens are as guilty as pensioners. To some, this is a social perk of going to a physical store.
4. Most people taught before the calculator generation can estimate the cost of their purchases and, when quoted the exact figure, sum up a few coins in seconds. This tends to exclude those in their teens and 20s, unless they have made a willing effort of their own to master mental arithmetic. This disparty becomes painfully obvious whenever some electronic system fails, or in the event I do not pay by exact change and receive incorrect change.
5. But it turns out that when you get old, your mental and manual dexterity is reduced. You have two choices: stay at home and wither away lest you have to confront an arrogant version of yourself from 50 years ago with all the advantages of health that youth enjoys, or rage against the dying of the light and try your best. Meanwhile, while I am young, I shall appreciate those who have endured more than twice as many years and hardships as me yet carry on. I'm quite sure there is no emergency requiring me to get my purchases home within five minutes rather than ten, and I can use the time to think, to listen (to those around me or to a recorded book), or to chat.
If you still abhor the environment of a physical store, they have the Internet for shopping now.
UK vs USA vs AUS (Score:2, Insightful)
Other than the cashflow benefits of not paying things immediately, I honestly can't see what benefit they have over other payment methods.
Time it takes me to get $$$ from a US check: 3-6 weeks.
Time it takes a wire transfer from anywhere else; 1-8 days max.
Re:How do people pay eachother? (Score:3, Insightful)
What range do RFID chips have?
And if you were to increase the power, how much range could you get?
What's to stop someone building a portable high power RFID reader, strapping it round their waist and walking around some crowded places like train stations and taking a small amount from anyone who got within range?
Re:Good Riddance (Score:5, Insightful)
The alternative can not be automatic bill payment. I just had a situation in which an insurance company took an entire years premium instead of the agreed upon monthly payment. That triggered a cascade of overdraft fees to my account. The company involved did redeposit the money they accidentally took but they failed to pay for the overdraft fees that they directly caused. They will pay eventually but in the mean time I am short of over $100 in expenses generated by their error. Automatic bill payment is not safe enough to use in my opinion.
Crushing dictatorships aren't needed if... (Score:1, Insightful)
If whoever is in power (and it isn't necessarily the politicians) can monitor what you do, have control of your means of communications and can, on a whim, prevent you from travelling, then they don't need to put you in a concentration camp. You are already effectively under house arrest.
You know this. Somewhere in the back of your mind you realise that you are being monitored and that your movements are tracked, your behaviour has changed (well maybe you were compliant already). Good. No need for big brother to intervene there either.
A crushing dictatorship doesn't need jackboots and marching troops, nor does it need to use physical violence in order for it to exist. With the right technology there will be no need for all that. You are the perfect product of this technology. Compliant and blind.
Re:Good Riddance (Score:3, Insightful)
What about large purchases? I use my debit card for all small transactions, however when I paid the HVAC contractor I wrote a check. When I bought my car, I wrote a check. When I bought my house I wrote a check. For everything else I use electronic transaction, but there are lots of cases that a check is the best/only option.
Re:Wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
Have you ever heard an American freak out when a Brit on /. uses a British colloquialism?
Well, you for one.
Re:In ong run should just switch to digital cash (Score:3, Insightful)
>We have cryptographically secure algorithms for anonymous digital cash. [...] We really should be working to switch to such a system.
Never going to happen.
The government - any technologically advanced 'Western' government, but specifically the British - will never accept anonymous over monitored; tracked; recorded or vetted *anything* where there is the option of doing one or the other or both.
Information is power - and they like their power over the serfs too much.
Re:I thought they were already gone in EU (Score:3, Insightful)
Or in the US you could do it through the incredibly backwards way of setting up BillPay (for your rent) with your bank (like I do), at which point your bank will actually mail a paper check each month to your rental office, just so it can eventually find its way back to them and be cashed.
It's ridiculous.