Treasury intervenes to calm cheque storm

By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
Updated:

The Treasury has stepped into the controversy over banks’ plans to abolish cheques by 2018.

Ministers want no final decision made until the banks have produced the alternative to the cheque that they have talked about but have yet to unveil.

The death sentence on the cheque, announced by the banks’ Payments Council on December 16, already faces possible investigation by the competition authorities as an abuse of a monopoly position.

Cheques

End of the cheque? Cheques could be phased out by 2018

It has emerged that the Treasury has become involved by demanding – and being given – an assurance that the banks will consult regularly with the Treasury’s Financial Inclusion Taskforce, an independent body that advises the Government on helping poorer people to benefit fully from banking and other services.

‘Ministers are pretty concerned,’ said a Treasury source.

‘They are aware a lot of people still use cheques. They want to ensure those people are not adversely affected.’

The Payments Council said it would ensure that ‘innovation and new options’, if required, would be brought forward to ensure that nobody would need cheques by 2018.

Earlier this month, it emerged that the Office of Fair Trading warned the Payments Council in 2007, when the idea of scrapping cheques was floated, that this could be considered a monopoly action, given that all the banks would be doing the same thing at the same time.

The council said it had taken legal advice and was satisfied that it was not acting as a monopoly.

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