Cheque out how we make payments these days
STAYING SAFE
YEAR
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
DON’T use unfamiliar devices, including public computers, to do your banking. UPDATE your anti-virus software. CHANGE -8.5% -11.3% -10.3% -12.8% -12.31% -13.3% -13.9% -14.7% -16.6% -20.5% -20.6% ONLY use larger credible websites to make purchases. TAKE more than one card when travelling, in case of an emergency. ASK Australians about cheques and most would say they are a thing of the past; the payment version of fondue parties and shag carpet. But new analysis reveals they are not dead yet.
Financial services firm Canstar examined RBA payment statistics and found there are still plenty in use – Individuals or businesses wrote more than 81 million cheques in 2017. Group manager of research and ratings Mitchell Watson said this proved they are still needed.
“I thought cheques were either very low volume or nonexistent,” he said.
“But it turns out a lot of businesses and government departments still send them.”
Among consumers it’s more likely to be older Australians who reached for the cheque book.
“We’ve had at least 20 years of online banking and we are pushing away from cheques, but there is still a reliance on them,” Mr Watson said.
“Recently even I closed an account and the only way to get the excess money was from a cheque sent via the post. This was one of the larger banking institutions.”
But while 81 million cheques might seem a lot, the numbers were down 20.6 per cent on the more than 102 million written the year before, which was down 20.5 per cent on the 128 million written in 2015.
Australian Payments Network chief executive officer Dr Leila Fourie said it was important to put the numbers in context, because cheque payments represented less than 0.2 per cent of all payments in Australia. 165 BUNDA ST CAIRNS