All we are saying is give cash a chance

An email arrives from Bank Machine's PR peeps..."You may well have seen that the UK Payments Council announced the results of their latest quarterly statistical report," says the PR lady. "Although trying desperately to make it a contactless story, the real story which they carefully buried were the stats showing that last year showed a record high in ATM withdrawals, beating the mark set in 2008."

It's true that the Payments Council press release went big on the fact that Britons sent two-thirds more money through Faster Payments in the last three months of 2011 compared to the previous year, with the ATM stats thrown in almost as an afterthought. So in the interest of fairness...The busiest single second in the LINK network’s 25 year history was recorded at 13:03:57 on Friday 28 October, with 482 transactions made. Overall, we used cash machines 2.87 billion times during the year, taking out £191 billion, and the overwhelming majority of these transactions were free. Fewer than one in 30 ATM withdrawals were at a pay-to-use machine in the last three months of 2011, the lowest percentage for seven years.   

And comment from Ron Delnevo, MD at Bank Machine: "The level of ATM usage vividly demonstrates once again that the British public continue to place their trust in cash. Neither flashy hyping of unproven gimmicks like "contactless" cards, nor attempts to limit access to ATMs, have prevented UK citizens from continuing to exercise their right to choose cash as their number one payment method."

According to the Payments Council, the underlying reasons for the record year are "the low levels of withdrawals a year earlier during the period of heavy snowfall, the increase in the number of free-to-use machines, coupled with an increase in the number of machines dispensing £5 notes, and a possible slight increase in demand for cash by people who prefer to use cash as a budgeting tool to control their spending."

There you go, everyone's happy.

Plan to end cheques under fire

It's not often that I find myself agreeing with our elected officials. Politics is just show business for ugly people, as someone once quipped. But today I make an exception. A Treasury Select Committee has warned banks not to attempt to abandon cheques or deter customers from using them. It has also taken a swipe at the Payments Council and suggested that it be brought under regulatory control.

Andrew Tyrie, chairman of the committee, comments: "The Payments Council is a industry-dominated body with no effective public accountability. It should not have unfettered power to take decisions on matters such as the future of cheques, that are of vital importance to millions of people. Banks have given customers the impression the abolition of cheques was a foregone conclusion. This type of behaviour is unacceptable."

Hear hear!

Common sense prevails as cheques given reprieve

Fantastic to hear that the Payments Council has scrapped plans to phase out cheques by 2018. The plans had met with a backlash from the likes of charities and politicians, leading the Treasury Select Committee to reopen its probe.

Richard North, chairman of the Payments Council, has said: "It's in the DNA of the Payments Council to consult and listen to all those people who actually make payments and use cheques."

Hmmm, well better late than never, I guess. Of course, there has been a marked decline in cheque usage as chip and PIN has soared, but many people still rely on them and the 2018 deadline always smacked of the banks (aggrieved at how much it costs to process cheques) forcing something through with little or no regard for their customers, most notably those in the charity sector and small businesses. To quote Simon Morrison, director of marketing and communications at the Institute of Fundraising: "We are delighted that the Payment Council has disposed with the proposed end date for cheques. This will make a world of difference to a lot of our members, especially as some charities currently receive up to 80 per cent of their funding by cheques. For a large cohort of donors cheques are a preferred method of donation."