Collecting Cheque Payments at POS
Cheque payments at the POS are in world-wide decline, they are primarily being replaced by payment by cards. Although in some retailers have stopped accepting cheques, most retailers still accept cheques, so they don't limit their sales.
If the move from cheques is to payment cards, it will definitely cut retailer costs if it is to debit cards. (The British Retail Consortium's 2008 'Cost of Collection' survey of over-the-counter POS payments in the UK showed that the total cost per payment for medium-large retailers, including all bank charges, processing costs and fraud cost, was for: debit cards 8p, credit cards 35p, charge cards 52p and cheques 53p.)
Cheque Payments Over Counter
The first two tasks in accepting cheque payments over the counter is identify the customer and validate the cheque on a verification system to confirm that the cheque account is valid and has sufficient available funds. This can be done by using the national cheque guarantee schemes and on counter cheque readers and/or POS terminals which link to online cheque guaranteed schemes.
In the USA cheques can be deposited directly using the remote deposit capture processes that have been developed for cheques. Cheque readers on the shop counter or even using a mobile phone's camera as a scanner, enable cheques to be processed at POS.
Cheques Payments on Internet/Mobile
A growing number of banks accept deposits by cheque payments via Smart mobile phones. Consumer take a picture of front and back of a cheque and the cheque amount will be added to the consumer's account within 3-6 days. Some merchants accept payment for goods and services by this method, but goods delivery is delayed until the funds have cleared.