In the UK ten years ago, cheques dominated business-to-business payments with 668 million cheques issued in 2002 compared with just 308 million Bacs payments, according to the Payments Council UK Payments Markets 2013 report. However, by 2014, the use of cheques for B2B was just 247 million cheques(compared to 3.4 billion Direct Debits and 2.2 billion Bacs Payments). 

BACS, the UK’s ACH, is now processing record number of payments. In November 2014, it processed 98.6 million transactions in one day - the equivalent of 6.3 million payments an hour. 

Overall 2014 clearing statistics

In the 12 months to end December 2014, the overall clearing statistics were:

This shows how:

• Faster Payments is still growing faster that any other payment method at 14% even after having been established for nearly 7 years and single Immediate Payment grew 21% in 2014
• cheques usage is is declining rapidly (-14%) and overall volume is now just under 7% of BACS and Faster Payments volume.

Rethinking payments strategy in the UK

In the UK cheques should be used for as few payments as possible. Faster Payments, direct debit and direct credits are now acceptable almost everywhere.