Dear LPG,

I am hoping that you will be able to put my message out on 16 February 2020, because if you do, it will be a day that some of us will celebrate.

I bet you did not know that the first cheque ever was reported to have been written 361 years ago today.  The history books tell that one Mr. Nicholas Vanacker settled a debt by writing his intention on a piece of paper. He made it payable to a Mr. Delboe at a time when cheques were on the brink of becoming a new innovation.

It is interesting that in spite of the banks’ attempts to phase them out they are still with us, and I suspect that this is because we older people still use them.  I find it ironic that while many youngsters, and by that I mean anyone under the age of forty, quietly scoffs at us older people that still get the cheque book out when asked to make a payment.  It may be the case that we have not mastered the intricacies of electronic financial transfers, but so many young people often have no idea how to draw one because they have never done so.

Do you remember the national drive to eliminate them from UK existence a couple of years ago which ended in failure?

It appears that, in the same way that the government is trying to promote the paper carrier bag over the plastic ones, there is still a case for the good old-fashioned paper bank transfer method of payment over the plastic cards.  But here is another interesting fact that I learned on the internet recently.

I did quite a lot of looking for information to the contrary, and having found none I have to conclude, that it is still legal that a cheque can be written on anything provided it has all the relevant information included? 

So all those big cardboard ones that are presented by charities are just as legal as the ones that the banks issue in books and, while the banks are becoming more and more reluctant to send a replacement cheque book out unless you actually ask for it, it appears that if you run out, you can write your cheque on any old scrap of paper as long as all the details are there.

All that aside, I am one of those who still values the fact that I can write a cheque in order to pay someone and I am sure that there are many like me, so I say long live the chequebook! 

GJ, Penge

LPG found some information…

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