In article ,
wrote:
It does make me wonder if the people who evangelise online payments for
everything actually have vested interests.

Of course they do. Sorting and processing cheques is very expensive,
as is dealing disputes when they're lost in the mail, or people claim
they're lost in the mail.

Since October 2017, cheques in the UK are photographed by the payee or
his bank, and all you get back is a picture. Doesn't seem all that
different from a transfer.

Over on this side of the pond, where we've had check imaging for
several years, the banks all provide a free billpay service where you
enter the payee's address and phone number, not bank details, and it
mails them a check, which is a good deal for the customer since they
pay for the stamp. I found that even though we have thousands of
banks, there are two service bureaux that do most of the billpay. You
can sign up with them so if they recognize your details on an outgoing
payment (that's what the phone number is for) they "truncate" the
check and transfer the money directly into your account, saving
several days.

There are also account to account transfers if you know the
recipient's bank details, but they're a lot less popular. And there
are third party apps like Venmo and Square Cash and Zelle (the last
being the banks' belated response to the first two) which will handle
the coordination between payor and payee. Venmo is very popular among
the under-30 crowd.

For the record, my dog is opposed to check truncation because when I
get a paper check, we take down to the bank where they fuss over him
and give him a dog biscuit.

--
Regards,
John Levine, , Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly