General > General Technical Chat
Cheques being phased out in Australia by 2030
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Halcyon:

--- Quote from: tggzzz on October 10, 2023, 12:27:10 am ---
--- Quote from: Halcyon on October 09, 2023, 11:34:24 pm ---In my experience, all the banks I've banked with allow customers to access up to 10 years' worth of transaction statements, instantly, online. If you need older, the bank can retrieve that for you. Most banks will also send out paper statements, if requested. Besides all that, you yourself can elect to keep all the paper trails you want by simply printing them yourself.

--- End quote ---

10 years isn't enough.

I know that here HMRC (Revenue and Customs) can demand paperwork (w.r.t. probate and inheritance tax) from 20 years ago[1]. Banks certainly don't keep statements available that long.

When daughter went to university I went and looked at my bank statements from when I was at university. I was able to see that her income-vs-expenditure was very similar to mine, with the exception of the "new" tuition fees. That gave us both the good feeling that she should be able to manage; she did.

[1] other timescales are 4 years for genuine mistakes, 6 years for carelessness, 12 years for “an offshore matter or offshore transfer”, 20 years for deliberate tax evasion

--- End quote ---

Again, this comes down to the individual. I can't speak for banks in the UK, but I know for certain that Australian banks keep transaction records, at least in my case, way back to when the account was first opened, which was far longer than 10 years.

If you believe this is a limitation for you, then what's stopping you from storing/scanning/saving records yourself? They are all available. If it's a requirement for taxation auditing, you should be keeping appropriate records already, if you aren't, that sounds like a "you problem".

I see this as a secondary issue, not one about phasing out an old payment method. As I mentioned earlier, other options exist, it just requires some individuals to change the way they do things, as opposed to this mentality of "this is the way I've done things for 50 years, I'm not changing now".
David_AVD:

--- Quote from: tggzzz on October 10, 2023, 12:31:20 am ---Here's the bit you conveniently snipped in order to make that claim....
--- End quote ---

Damn, you got me (not). I should know better than to feed to trolls. lol
coppice:

--- Quote from: tggzzz on October 09, 2023, 11:22:59 pm ---
--- Quote from: coppice on October 09, 2023, 11:02:38 pm ---
--- Quote from: TimFox on October 09, 2023, 10:11:06 pm ---I find it amusing here when those ahead of me in the grocery checkout aisle take a much longer time to pay on-line than it takes me to pay cash.
(Of course, those who pay by check take even longer.)

--- End quote ---
What kind of antique validation systems do your stores use? There are places in the UK where a card takes 30s to validate a transaction, like its some 1980s dial up terminal. Those are used in places with infrequent transactions. However, in high traffic places, like supermarkets, where the transaction time really matters, it only takes a second or two, especially for tap and go transactions, where I don't even need to tap in a PIN.

--- End quote ---
Latency in increased where the terminal has to make a connection to something that will authorise the transaction. Connections via a cell phone make that particularly slow and annoyimg.

Latency is decreased where the merchant decides to "self authorise" a transaction without involving another part of the astoundingly complex (and expensive!) payments ecosystem. Supermarkets probably use a very local (=fast) algorithm like "PIN OK" and "previously used in this store without problem" therefore we'll assume it is OK this time".

So having good infrastructure isn't the source of the speed, rather avoiding using the infrastructure is the key speedup.

--- End quote ---
Er, no. I've accidentally let my current account run to zero a couple of times, and the supermarket rejected my payment in a second or two. I went to my phone, moved more money into my current account, reran the payment after the minute or two which that took, and it went through.
Rick Law:

--- Quote from: jonpaul on October 09, 2023, 05:14:38 pm ---In a gov tax audit all proof is via paper evidence.

A canceled paper check is your best defense.

Jon

--- End quote ---


--- Quote from: Halcyon on October 09, 2023, 11:34:24 pm ---...
Evidence of money and proof of transactions extend far beyond a cheque stub these days, and have done for decades.

--- End quote ---


Physical check/cheque plus the transaction records kept by the bank is both convenient and definitive.

On one occasion, my "auto club" (road side assistant) claims I did not paid the annual club fee.  After multiple phone calls failed to resolve the problem, I went to the bank.  The bank faxed them front and back of the check image confirming that it matches the bank's record of transaction -- the back of the check has the endorsement and the date and bank id where the auto-club deposited the payment.  There is no more argument.  They credited my payment.

On another occasion, I had to pay a "pre-payment" during pre-admission tests (usually a week before admission to hospital for non-emergency)...  Long story short, they billed me again -- not a small amount, surgery is not cheap.
- I contested, they want proof of payment ...
- I forwarded the pre-payment receipt email they send me (containing the jpg image of receipt) back to them.
- They say "any body can cut and paste, show me your credit card statement...
- So I show them the credit card statement showing the charge on my card matching the emailed receipt.
- They say: "...you might have rejected the charge..."
- So I show them the following month's credit card receipt - no credit for rejected charges
That went on for over 6 months before final resolution to my favor.

I suspect the problem started because the patient was my wife and not me.  When I made the pre-payment, somehow it was credited to me as a new future-patient and not my wife (then current patient with an established account).  Then to complicate matter, they were acquired by and merged with another hospital around that time.

I don't trust digital records kept by others.  I suspect the hospital never exported the old database records to the new hospital's system.  We used to be able to logon to the old hospital's site to view prior stuff done like visits, blood test results,  pathology reports, so on.  Post merger, the new logon has nothing prior -- she is a new patient.

Good that I saved the pdf of the most important things.  In a discussion me and my wife had with the physician, I was able to show her (the physician) a print of the old cat-scan pathology report so as to point out certain changes.  That a cat-scan was done 3 or 4 years ago was unknown to the physician.  Seeing that printout, she (the physician) went to another room (I assume to access the old system), came back with more details on that cat-scan.  We were all glad I had that old printout.  Now we have an old cat scan to compare to the new.

One can be too easily erased when one's life has no physical evidence of existence.
DimitriP:

--- Quote ---I don't trust digital records kept by others.
--- End quote ---
   :-+

I don't trust digital records kept by others

There you go, I fixed it :)

Self sufficient record  keeping may look like paranoia to others, but it's prudence and readiness for when Murphy shows up! 
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