Editing Cheque (section)

==== Decline in Europe ====
In most European countries, cheques are now rarely used or have been completely phased out, even for third party payments except for the United Kingdom, France and Ireland. In most western European countries, it was standard practice for businesses to publish their bank details on invoices, to facilitate the receipt of payments by [[Giro (banking)|giro]]. Even before the introduction of online banking, it has been possible in some countries to make payments to third parties using ATMs, which may accurately and rapidly capture invoice amounts, due dates, and payee bank details via a bar code reader to reduce keying. In using a cheque, the onus is on the payee to initiate the payment, whereas with a giro transfer, the onus is on the payer to effect the payment. 

In the United Kingdom, France and Ireland cheques continued to be used as cheque payments were free for the consumer. However these countries have also seen significant declines since 2000. Since 2001, businesses in the United Kingdom made more electronic payments than cheque payments. The UK Payments Council announced in 2011 that cheques would continue as long as customers needed them reversing a previous target to phase out cheques by 2018.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.ft.com/content/2fc8b8ce-8dc0-4bad-90e1-79ea596c9e0b |title=Why cheques aren't quite dead yet |date=July 30, 2021 |publisher=Financial Times}}</ref>

France, remains well ahead of its European counterparts in the use of cheque payments, as seen in 2020 where it is estimated that more than 1 billion cheque payments were made, compared to Italy, the country with the next highest number of payments, with under 100 million.<ref>{{cite web |date=9 September 2021 |title=Total number of check payments in 27 countries in Europe from 2000 to 2020 |url=https://www.statista.com/statistics/443677/cashless-payment-with-checks-europe/ |access-date=17 September 2022}}</ref>