( Empty ) Technology

The board of the UK Payments Council is looking at whether to phase out cheques by 2018, in favour of wireless payments, chip and PIN, and internet banking.

While the Council have said that cheques will need “accessible and acceptable” alternatives before being give the heave-ho, charities have raised the issue of the complexity of technology being a barrier to use to old people. Furthermore, cheques seem a favoured way to send money in the post or via untrusted carriers (such as schoolchildren and to pay tradespeople who don’t carry Chip-and-PIN devices. Cheques may be expensive to process, but they’re also safe and lightweight to move around.

Emptytech is interested to hear what you think – are there alternatives to cheques that are usable and accessible? Is modern banking, with its focus on security tokens, phishing attacks and “virtual” cash too confusing? How can we improve the way in which we move money around?

As usual, comments welcome here on the blog, or as @replies via Twitter (which should also appear here).

A lot of the time it seems like the things we invent have value more as distraction than anything useful – playthings for those bored at work, or content designed to pass time until we die. But at the same time, entertainment can be a great thing – we learn through play, we explore relationships through stories, we find out about the world through the models we build.

So do we take technology as a plaything for granted? Or do we waste too much time on incessant chit-chat? Are our idle conversations network builders for greater things, or do they prevent us from moving towards real goals and real action?

(N.B. Hopefully any comments via Twitter will be picked up as comments here.)