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Denmark officially kills the cheque

The Local Denmark
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Denmark officially kills the cheque
Does anyone under the age of 30 even know what a check is? Photo: JJ'Studio/Iris

In a country where even the smallest purchases are routinely carried out with the national debit card, Dankort, and people increasingly use smartphone payment systems like the incredibly popular MobilePay, writing a cheque seems hopelessly outdated.

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The nation’s banks agree and as of January 1st, it will no longer be possible to cash cheques from other banks in Denmark. The only option that will remain is to cash a cheque written by the same bank that issued them, a move that essentially means the total end of they payment form. 
 
At their peak in the early 1980s, more than 200 annual cheques were written in Denmark but they have fallen completely out of fashion in today’s society. 
 
“They had their time but it’s over now,” Ann Lehmann Erichsen, a consumer economist at Nordea, told news agency Ritzau. 
 
She said there is no reason to mourn the end of the cheque.
 
“There are much better, faster and safer alternatives and that’s why there is pretty much no one who uses cheques today,” Erichsen said. 
 
Cheque usage has been steadily dropping since the Dankort was introduced in 1983 and their road to extinction has accelerated in recent years thanks to Danes’ increasing use of net banking and services like MobilePay. 
 
The old paper cheque simply can’t compete with modern solutions. 
 
“It takes several days to process a cheque, while one can electronically transfer large amounts in just seconds today,” Erichsen said. 
 
According to Ritzau, some 600,000 cheques were processed this year but the vast majority of them were used in business to business transactions. 

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