LONDON - Energy giant Shell has announced that it will no longer accept cheques towards payment of bills at its 900 petrol stations. Shell thus becomes the first retailer in the UK to take such a step.
The reason for this step was that the cost involved in processing the cheques was no longer proportionate to customers who paid via this method, thereby placing an unnecessary burden on the company, Shell said.
It added that less than 1 percent of its current customers opted to pay by cheques and since debit cards were the preferred method of payment these days, Shell felt that closing the cheque-option would make its task easier. "The number of customers wanting to pay by cheque has reduced significantly. Managers have been unhappy about the inconvenience of taking cheques to the bank and getting them cleared. It has been a drain on their time. This decision is part of a general trend in the retail sector," said a spokesman for the company.
Almost four billion cheques were used in 1990, but this figure slid to 2.1 billion last year.
These figures bear testimony to the fact that the ubiquitous cheque might be on the way out.
However, Sandra Quinn of the Association of Payment Clearing Systems refutes these theories, "We are seeing a period where cheque use has stopped growing in the way it used to grow. They are a niche product. That is what they are becoming. The kind of thing we use them for is to pay friends; to substitute where we can't use a card in an easy way," she told BBC.
But an APACS spokesman said, "If you ask someone under 30 for the last time they wrote a cheque, they will struggle to remember. They probably won't even know where their chequebook is. Even the older generation is using cheques less. Many people have suggested the cheque will no longer exist by 2020."
Posted
on : Sun, 11 Sep 2005 14:05 GMT | General News
By : Pippa Fielding
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