Our cheque books days may be coming to an end

Country Living with Francis Farragher

It’s not that long ago at all since a colleague of mine, who shall remain nameless, remarked that ‘this internet thing would never catch-on’, and while his comment might have had a certain tongue-in-cheek element to it, few of us realised after we had tentatively sent our first email, the influence the worldwide web would have on our lives.

A few weeks ago at my local credit union office as I bemoaned the fact that it was a pity the organisation didn’t have the freedom to offer a cheque book service to match the banks, a friendly employee remarked to me that probably in five years time, there would be very few cheque books around anywhere.

Like the internet remark ten years previously, I took that view to be a little ‘over-futuristic’ but alas the time is coming when both cheques and indeed cash too, will play less and less of a role in our daily financial dealings.

We’re all well used to the world of plastic money with our debit and credit cards. Now it seems likely that more and more transactions will be conducted electronically and the days of the old cheques bouncing will at last come to an end.

Over the years, one group of people I’ve come to have a fair amount of respect for are the managers of our livestock marts where week-in, week-out they conduct deals for hundreds of thousands euro worth of livestock, relying to a large extent on the trust built up between their main buyers.

On 95% of the time everything works out okay, but all that’s needed for the show to go belly-up, is for one company to slip into receivership, maybe just a couple of days after a load of livestock worth a hundred grand has left the mart yard.

It happened last year with the TLT export group with marts alone in Galway stung for a figure roughly estimated to be in the half million euro bracket, so at least for the hard pressed mart managers, more electronics and less cheque books should be very good news.

However the big switch to electronic money could be something of a double edged sword for institutions like the marts, in that already thousands of mainly younger farmers are switching to on-line sites when selling their livestock, farm produce or machinery.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.