Cheques 'still offer advantages'

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Cheques 'still offer advantages'

Thu 21st Feb 2008

Apacs, the UK payments association, has said that changes to the way cheques are cleared mean that they now offer "more certainty" than they did before.

Reforms introduced last November set a maximum time limit of two, four and six working days for each of the stages after paying in a cheque to a current or basic bank account setting.

A spokesperson for the organisation said that the changes allow consumers to know that after a specific amount of time has passed, the money is theirs.

She added that although the use of cheques by businesses has been in rapid decline since it peaked in 1997, they can still be useful, particularly for small and medium sized firms.

"You have a strict time frame now – after that point you know the money is yours and that’s a big benefit for the businesses that use them quite heavily," she added.

Increasingly companies use automated payment systems to pay for goods and services, leaving cheques obsolete.

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