The Joy of Cheques: Trust, Paper and Eighty Somethings

TY - GEN

T1 - The Joy of Cheques

T2 - Proc. CSCW 2012, to be presented in CSCW, Seattle, USA,

AU - Vines, John

AU - Dunphy, Paul

AU - Blythe, Mark

AU - Lindsay, Stephen

AU - Monk, Andrew Francis

AU - Olivier, Patrick

PY - 2012/5

Y1 - 2012/5

N2 - A cheque is a paper document that orders the transfer of money between bank accounts. Whilst an eighty year old in the UK is predicted on average to live at least another ten years, cheques may not. Despite the usefulness of cheques, banks in the UK are eager to abolish their use and design electronic alternatives that are less costly to process and less vulnerable to fraud. This paper reports on two qualitative studies exploring the banking experiences of 23 people aged between 80 and 98 years. Whilst their experiences with cheques are based upon trust through openness and support financial collaboration with others, digital payment systems ignore these values. We argue that whilst it might be possible to improve the design of digital payment systems to better support financial collaboration, this is not as strong as the case for keeping cheques. Rather than replacing them, we need to find ways of making cheques less costly to process and better linked to electronic payment methods.

AB - A cheque is a paper document that orders the transfer of money between bank accounts. Whilst an eighty year old in the UK is predicted on average to live at least another ten years, cheques may not. Despite the usefulness of cheques, banks in the UK are eager to abolish their use and design electronic alternatives that are less costly to process and less vulnerable to fraud. This paper reports on two qualitative studies exploring the banking experiences of 23 people aged between 80 and 98 years. Whilst their experiences with cheques are based upon trust through openness and support financial collaboration with others, digital payment systems ignore these values. We argue that whilst it might be possible to improve the design of digital payment systems to better support financial collaboration, this is not as strong as the case for keeping cheques. Rather than replacing them, we need to find ways of making cheques less costly to process and better linked to electronic payment methods.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84858259418&partnerID=8YFLogxK

M3 - Conference contribution

SP - 147

EP - 156

BT - Proceedings of CSCW 2012, Seattle, USA, 11-15 February 2012

PB - ACM

CY - New York

Y2 - 11 February 2012 through 15 February 2012

ER -