Neil Williams wrote:
On Mon, 30 Jun 2008 08:51:50 +0100, Martin Rich
wrote:

I doubt many people in Britain still use cheques to pay their credit
card bills, in preference to instructing bill payments by phone or
Internet.

I can't see cheques in the UK lasting another 10 years at all, to be
honest. In the US, though, my understanding is that many people still
get paid by cheque, which in the UK is almost completely unknown -
direct bank transfer is the usual.

In the US, it takes a couple pay cycles to get direct deposit set up,
though most white-collar workers do it immediately upon changing jobs.
It's not as common in service-industry or blue-collar jobs, where folks
may even be paid in cash each week or even each day; that appears to be
mainly a cultural thing, though the banks are trying their best to
change that by offering "free" accounts only to people with direct
deposit. Still, many folks resist that, for reasons I've never
understood myself. Also, many smaller employers simply don't offer it
because their banks charge extra fees for the service (in addition to
setup fees to use it at all), whereas checks are free.

S