Old-School Payments
I did something very old-school a couple of days ago; I paid in a physical cheque in a physical bank branch. It was a really strange and nostalgic experience. I enjoyed it for that reason.
I actually originally went in there to pay it over the counter to a teller, but I noticed the "electronic teller" was free so I decided to use that. It had been over two decades since using this kind of machine to pay in a cheque. It had been over five yeas since paying in a physical cheque. It had been over a year since going into a physical bank for a transaction.
The experience wasn't actually too bad. After authenticating yourself by inserting your bank card and typing in your pin, you insert the cheque which is scanned and processed by the machine. You can opt for a receipt of the transaction in the form of a photo printout.
Like I said, this tech has been around for decades now, and it hasn't changed since then. The machine itself doesn't connect to a payment or settlement network. It just sends the transaction instructions to back office for processing. I can imagine that this back office process has since been automated as part of some overnight run. This is why it takes one extra day for cheques paid in this way to appear in your account.
If I worked as a teller in a bank when this technology was first introduced decades ago, I would have started retraining immediately. Originally, people's skepticism that the machine would somehow "get it wrong" kept the teller's jobs secure. However, as time went on, these machines saw more use and became more ubiquitous. Nowadays, a bank teller is pretty much redundant. Heck, a bank branch is completely pointless to anyone under the age of 25.
This was evidenced by the average age of the people I saw in the bank on the day; mid 50s. When I was a young student, I remember having to set up a bank account in order to even function. Now, most uni students come in already having multiple financial apps on their phone, some of which are effectively banks with bank cards usable in Apple Pay or Google Pay.
Digital natives don't have the same skepticism the old folks did. Besides the security measures we have now are thousands of times more secure than a physical signature and a 4 number pin. We have biometrics, multi-factor authentication and cryptography. We also have instant payments ,including free ones, across the globe.
It's only a matter of time before bank branches, and tellers, go the way of Blockbusters.
Peace & Love,
Adé
I very rarely go into a bank and hardly ever use cheques. Now we don't even have a post office in the village. We could use those to pay in cheques in envelopes. It makes things hard for those who are not tech savvy. My mum doesn't like using computers.
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Whats up Morpheus?
I will tell you something funny :) I dont remember exactly but I guess it was like 2014 in UK. I've got a cheque to figure out. I go to cash machine to do same thing as you did. First one there was some kind of error and atm gave me back my card and cheque. I said ok lets try again, same thing I was ok, lets try a third time. It works and transaction goes through. I came back home, login to my bank account and can see 3 awaiting cheque transactions, each one with the same amount as cheque was. I was like... hmm ok they will probably correct that. After 5 days of waiting (it takes that long in 2014), I've got all these 3 transactions accepted and basically 3 times more money :)