Cheque out how we make payments these days

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.

Overall cheque usage has declined by 79.61 per cent over the past decade.

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.

“Older Australians are still most likely to use cheques, using them to pay for things like utility and household bills, memberships and donations to charities,” she said.

“But people over 65 are also choosing to use cards and electronic payment options more often.

“Many Australians in their 30s would never have written a cheque and I think that generational change will continue to play a big part in the demise of cheques.”

Dr Fourie said the emergence of new payment options like the New Payments Platform would help accelerate their decline and move closer to a society where “people and businesses simply don’t use them.”

She said the property exchange industry was a good example of the trend towards a cheque- free existence.

“This industry is progressively moving away from paper conveyancing to online property transactions,” she said.