Come fall of '18, checks will be no more in the UK:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091216/lf_n...in_cheques

Hmm. How will this harm the people with less than enough I wonder. At least now they can bring a photo ID and cash a check - no address or account required.

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Well, and businesses. Personally, being a small business owner, I'd rather take a check than plastic (no merchant fees) but I take plastic out of necessity. When someone orders something via an email or personal inquiry, I tell them I will take plastic or a check, but prefer a check if they don't mind.

I honestly can't remember the last time I used a paper check.

Maybe small business owners will be able to take electronic checks?

I still use checks for certain transactions. My church is not equipped to take people's pledges in anything but cash or check, for example. The church is already running a deficit of 30K for next year, and while they're setting up PayPal on the church website for non- and former-members who want to make a one-time donation, they want to make sure the members know not to use the PayPal to pay their pledge because suddenly we'll lose part of their pledge in PayPal fees and our deficit will grow.

Checks are very handy. If I have to send money with my kids to school I'm much more comfortable with a check than with cash. I bet there is some resistance to this idea.

MJ,
A better solution for your church for folks at a distance might be for people to set up recurring payments from their checking accounts. Most banks will send a check to organizations which aren't set up to accept direct transfers. Generally there are no fees on either side for this. Checks come in the mail and are deposited with the regular deposits.

The people who were members who now live at a distance generally transferred their membership to other churches and don't pledge to ours any more, just like I don't pledge to my hometown church - but I buy an Easter Lily or Poinsettia to decorate the home church every year in memory of my parents and grandparents, as do people who used to live in my current church's area. The price changes every year. The PayPal button would be for these instances, or for people who aren't members who want to donate to our Memorial Fund when one of our members dies (many members' families request donations to the fund in their obituaries). Recurring payments from a bank account wouldn't be the right method for these situations. And, if the US went like the UK and got rid of checks, the bank wouldn't be sending us checks in the mail anyway

I use my bank's website to pay most of my bills, but I've found it's not as good a system for those people I pay who don't accept direct transfers, like the credit union where I have two loans and the condo management company. The time the bank takes to print and cut the checks and sends them out and the other parties receive them is much longer than if I just write my own check and mail it. Of course I'd rather they took direct transfers so I could make last-minute payments, or last-minute changes to payments, but such is life.

Wrote one out yesterday as a donation for the school. Other than that, I don't use them often.

Hubby is a die hard though. He pays bills using paper checks and stamps every month. Won't listen to me when I tell him mailing a check WITH YOUR ACCOUNT NUMBER ON IT thru the US mail is less secure than a secure server online that masks account numbers.

Hubby too, and his parents' bank accounts are even worse (Soc Sec and Pension get deposited to PASSBOOK savings, which isn't linked to checking).

there are things I write checks for-but very few things, I could possibly not use them at all-but it would annoy me...


and they'll put all the check makers out of buisness~