For the past several thousand years large transactions have been facilitated with the help of one form or another of the humble cheque.
In use by ancient Indians, Romans, Muslim traders, Crusaders and Pilgrims to the Holy Land, Venetians and the Dutch, cheques by various different names were used to purchase goods and services by a third party to the payee, without the need to carry large amounts of money.
Handwritten cheques began to be heavily used in Britain throughout the 17th century, and by 1717 the Bank of England had begun using the first pre-printed forms. Slightly over a century later the Bank of England again forged ahead by inventing the chequebook. From then to the beginning of the 21st-century cheque usage steadily grew both throughout the world.
However, according to the RBA over the last decade, the use of the cheque has fallen dramatically in Australia. In 2002 there were more than 600 million cheques written in Australia in the 12 months prior. By September 2012, this has fallen to 232 million.
The fall can mostly be accounted for due to a drop in the number of ‘customer cheques’ – that is, ones that are written by individual and business customers – which have fallen by 63% over this period, while the number of financial institution cheques have only fallen by 18% over the same period.
Over a similar period usage of EFTPOS and debit card payments has increased dramatically, with the annual number of these transactions growing by 242% from 2003 to 2012.
While in past years there were only limited options for paying for goods and services in Australia, the coming decade seems to offer a multitude of new payment options. You can now bump your phone together with a friend, swipe your card above a terminal or use social media platforms to facilitate payment.
One can easily draw parallels between the cheque and the handwritten letter. However, while there is still an element of romance towards writing or receiving a handwritten letter, the act of writing or receiving a cheque really is just a bit of a pain, considering the effort compared to paying/receiving payment online.
Maybe the cheque is more like carbon copy for a typewriter – something that is unlikely to endure the coming decades. микрозаймы онлайн получить займ на карту срочноэкспресс займ воронежзайм онлайн за минуту