NZ Banks no longer accepting cheques

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Forums › Finance and wealth management › NZ Banks no longer accepting cheques

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#2699113 28-Apr-2021 09:49

Rikkitic:

I'm not arguing in favour of cheques. I think they have had their day and the world needs to move on. It is just that there has been a lot of anti-cartel talk in the news recently, and I was wondering how that works in this case. If the banks get together to agree to remove a service, isn't that cartel behaviour? Aren't they supposed to be competing, not making cosy arrangements?

I would imagine it's less a cartel/planned move made together; and more that one bank did it which makes cheques generally even less economic and more pointless for the rest of them. Plus a poor customer experience if a customer gets a cheque and then can't do anything with it because the other bank has scrapped cheques.

Kyanar

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#2699123 28-Apr-2021 10:16

freitasm:

Not sure about your friend's situation but I was paid from Amazon Affiliates via Payoneer (aff link) for years.

You can also use Wise (formerly Transferwise).

kingdragonfly

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#2699637 29-Apr-2021 13:36

networkn: I think they have been extremely considerate, it's about 10 years they have been indicating they are wanting to get out of them. They also gave plenty of notice (over a year), of the actual change.

Do the bank realize the US government, the IRS, will not deposit to foreign accounts? Also due to laundry launderins laws, you can't open a US account without a verifiable US address?

So anyone in New Zealand with a US passport, such as a dual citizen, can't deposit their US refund checks?

https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/blog/2020/04/economic-impact-payments-us-citizens-abroad?page=5

...Depending on your income, U.S. expatriates can get up to $1,200 each, or up to $2,400 for couples, plus $500 for each qualifying child, just as you would if living stateside. And, most people don’t need to do anything to get their payments.

The IRS will deposit your payment directly to your U.S. bank account

(the IRS can’t direct deposit money to a foreign account),

or mail your payment using information from your 2018 or 2019 tax return or from your Social Security retirement or other federal benefits program....

kingdragonfly

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#2699645 29-Apr-2021 13:49

So what NZ banks will continue to accept checks? Because that's the one I'm going to use

kingdragonfly

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#2699647 29-Apr-2021 13:57

It also affects Indians living in New Zealand.

Bloomberg / QuintWill Checkes Soon Check-Out Of The Indian Payment System?

"In a speech on May 30 2020, the [Indian Reserve Bank Deputy Governor] highlighted that India still processes over 90 million cheques per month.

This is important as cheques are also non-cash transactions and are often not given due importance, he said.

The value of payments via cheques has roughly averaged about NZD $18,500,000,000 (18.5 billion) a month in recent months....

kingdragonfly

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#2699651 29-Apr-2021 14:04

Newshub: Concerns move to phase out cheques will have adverse effect on rural communities

There are concerns rural communities will be unfairly disadvantaged as banks phase out the use of cheques.

According to a survey by Rural Women NZ, 61.3 percent of respondents said they were worried about the disappearance of cheques, while only 26.7 percent said they didn't feel as if it were a problem.

Now, the organisation is launching a campaign to try and prolong the use of cheques until they "naturally phase themselves out".

"The response was the highest we've ever had for a survey in three years. So it's clearly an issue for rural communities," Angela McLeod, Rural Women NZ's government relations manager, told Newshub.
...
Kiwibank stopped accepting cheques in February last year, with Inland Revenue and ACC doing the same in March. BNZ, ANZ and Westpac have also said they will phase out cheques this year.

ASB has said cheques account for less than 1 percent of its payments, and also signalled they would be phased out, though the bank has yet to give a specific time frame for when they would no longer be accepted.
...

HP

Shop now for HP laptops and other devices (affiliate link).

Handle9

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#2699653 29-Apr-2021 14:06

kingdragonfly:
networkn: I think they have been extremely considerate, it's about 10 years they have been indicating they are wanting to get out of them. They also gave plenty of notice (over a year), of the actual change.

Do the bank realize the US government, the IRS, will not deposit to foreign accounts? Also due to laundry launderins laws, you can't open a US account without a verifiable US address?

So anyone in New Zealand with a US passport, such as a dual citizen, can't deposit their US refund checks?

https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/blog/2020/04/economic-impact-payments-us-citizens-abroad?page=5

...Depending on your income, U.S. expatriates can get up to $1,200 each, or up to $2,400 for couples, plus $500 for each qualifying child, just as you would if living stateside. And, most people don’t need to do anything to get their payments.

The IRS will deposit your payment directly to your U.S. bank account

(the IRS can’t direct deposit money to a foreign account),

or mail your payment using information from your 2018 or 2019 tax return or from your Social Security retirement or other federal benefits program....

It's not that they don't know, it's that they don't care. The IRS doesn't care about NZ so why should NZ businesses care about the IRS?

They are a business functioning in NZ. If it's become uneconomic to process cheques here then that's how it goes.

Hammerer

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#2699654 29-Apr-2021 14:06

kingdragonfly:

So anyone in New Zealand with a US passport, such as a dual citizen, can't deposit their US refund checks?

NZ banks will no longer process cheques issued by NZ domestic banks. These announcements don't affect a very limited range of countries that produce cheques that are accepted here, e.g. as at ANZ:

"Foreign cheques in Australian Dollars (AUD), Canadian Dollars (CAD), Great British Pounds (GBP) and United States Dollars (USD) will still be able to be deposited until further notice" https://www.anz.co.nz/comms/cheque-removal/

https://bankomb.org.nz/guides-and-cases/quick-guides/payment-systems/foreign-cheques/

kingdragonfly: So what NZ banks will continue to accept checks? Because that's the one I'm going to use

No NZ bank is continuing to accept domestic cheques beyond ASB which has an end date of August 2021.

https://www.asb.co.nz/page/cheque-free.html

Rikkitic

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#2699659 29-Apr-2021 14:15

This strikes me as incredibly arrogant parochialism on the part of New Zealand banks. I can't understand how they can be allowed to get away with this. I don't personally use cheques and haven't for a long time, nor so I think their use should be encouraged, but there are legitimate reasons to maintain a cheque-cashing service for those cases, such as overseas government payments, that cannot be done differently. This is just banks telling their customers to go to hell and I think it is despicable. If they can get together to impose a measure like this, why can't they get together to set up a cheque-cashing service (for a goddamned fee, of course!) for those exceptional cases that have no other recourse?

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wellygary

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#2699660 29-Apr-2021 14:18

Batman:

anyone with BNZ ?

any news re cheques ?

Going, going, nearly gone,

"From 1 July, 2021:

we’ll no longer accept cheques, including foreign cheques

you can still deposit cheques until 30 June, 2021.

From 12 December, 2020:

we’ll no longer issue/supply bank cheques

we’ll continue to accept any bank cheques that were issued before 12 December, 2020.

From 28 August, 2020:

we’ll no longer supply new cheque books, but you’ll still be able to write and deposit cheques

we’ll no longer provide international cheques – this means you’ll need to make international payments through Internet Banking

you won’t be able to post a cheque to pay your credit card or personal loan statement.

https://www.bnz.co.nz/personal-banking/everyday-banking/cheques

kingdragonfly

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#2699670 29-Apr-2021 14:29

From what I can see this is a list of affected banks

ANZ -------- May 2021
ASB -------- August 2021
BNZ -------- July 2021
Rabobank -------- June 2021
Westpac -------- June 2021

Banks that may continue to accept checks, for now

The Co-operative bank
HSBC
SBS
TSB

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Handle9

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#2699671 29-Apr-2021 14:31

Rikkitic:
This strikes me as incredibly arrogant parochialism on the part of New Zealand banks. I can't understand how they can be allowed to get away with this. I don't personally use cheques and haven't for a long time, nor so I think their use should be encouraged, but there are legitimate reasons to maintain a cheque-cashing service for those cases, such as overseas government payments, that cannot be done differently. This is just banks telling their customers to go to hell and I think it is despicable. If they can get together to impose a measure like this, why can't they get together to set up a cheque-cashing service (for a goddamned fee, of course!) for those exceptional cases that have no other recourse?

You are implying collusion. What is your evidence of this? A group of businesses coming to the same conclusion is very different to collusion.

Why should shareholders, and the majority of customers, pay for an uneconomic service required by very few? If there's so much demand someone will offer the service. If there isn't they won't.

The banks are behaving entirely reasonably in this case. They have told people this is coming for many years.

davidcole

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#2699673 29-Apr-2021 14:34

Handle9:
Rikkitic:

This strikes me as incredibly arrogant parochialism on the part of New Zealand banks. I can't understand how they can be allowed to get away with this. I don't personally use cheques and haven't for a long time, nor so I think their use should be encouraged, but there are legitimate reasons to maintain a cheque-cashing service for those cases, such as overseas government payments, that cannot be done differently. This is just banks telling their customers to go to hell and I think it is despicable. If they can get together to impose a measure like this, why can't they get together to set up a cheque-cashing service (for a goddamned fee, of course!) for those exceptional cases that have no other recourse?

You are implying collusion. What is your evidence of this? A group of businesses coming to the same conclusion is very different to collusion.

Why should shareholders, and the majority of customers, pay for an uneconomic service required by very few? If there's so much demand someone will offer the service. If there isn't they won't.

The banks are behaving entirely reasonably in this case. They have told people this is coming for many years.

You all realise that banks in the 80s in NZ all ran through the same clearing house for all their programs....in fact they set up the clearing house, which included check processing. They have since split all their processing back to themselves.

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Hammerer

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#2699689 29-Apr-2021 15:15

If one bank kept processing cheques then I'd be surprised if they got many new and profitable customers. Large cheque acceptors - such as the government (IRS), utilities, supermarkets, etc. - will have stopped using them so it will only really be the relatively small percentage of private-private cheque writers. That used to be well under 10% of all cheque writers.

Average decline in cheque volumes means that the business is dying like letter post so there's not a lot of scale economies to keep fees down:

2005-2010 -10% p.a.
2010-2015 -17% p.a.
2015-2019 -28% p.a.

Although average transaction values appear to be dropping slowly towards 2019, I'd expect them to drop much faster as bulk cheque writers go electronic and more non-reversible, high-value payments, like real estate, are settled electronically. Charging fees to make processing economic would depress cheque usage even further.

2010 $2,178 78m
2011
2012 67m
2013 53m
2014
2015 $2,200 35m
2016 $2,206 27m
2017 $2,135 23m
2018 $2,032 15m
2019 $2,078 13m

BlinkyBill

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#2699692 29-Apr-2021 15:20

kingdragonfly:

https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/blog/2020/04/economic-impact-payments-us-citizens-abroad?page=5

...Depending on your income, U.S. expatriates can get up to $1,200 each, or up to $2,400 for couples, plus $500 for each qualifying child, just as you would if living stateside. And, most people don’t need to do anything to get their payments.

The IRS will deposit your payment directly to your U.S. bank account

(the IRS can’t direct deposit money to a foreign account),

or mail your payment using information from your 2018 or 2019 tax return or from your Social Security retirement or other federal benefits program....

Hasn’t the timeframe for this ended?

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