A recent decision by the UK’s Payments Council to stop clearing cheques by 2018—and its subsequent challenge by a UK member of parliament—brings to my mind the current state of the business payments market in the US, the country’s continued reliance on cheques, and the inefficiency of cheques as a mechanism for business payments.

UK MP David Ward argued that the decision to stop clearing cheques should be made by an independent body—rather than the bank-led Payments Council—and should be accountable to Parliament.

Republished from the Benche, a financial community for corporate treasurers.

Lots of new country reports can now be found on the Benche. If you click on one of the countries below the report will be opened in a separate window. For more reports go to Country Reports here on the Benche.

The following countries have been updated:

• Indonesia
• Vietnam
• Thailand
• Hungary
• Poland
• Russia
• Nigeria
• Saudi Arabia
• South Africa
• Ireland

It has been almost seven weeks since any European bank issued senior unsecured bonds in the market. Partly to blame is the rapid rise in spread levels, which over that time have increased by 50 bps to 100 bps for double AA-rated banks in Northern Europe and by much more for their cousins from Southern Europe.

But an equal cause of the drought has been the EU-wide guarantee schemes that individual countries set up from October 2008 in the wake of Lehman Brother's collapse. Many of these schemes were due to end last year but they have been extended. Reports suggest that Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Hungary are likely to extend their guarantee schemes beyond June 30^th. France Italy and the UK are likely to let their schemes lapse (although the UK allows the government guaranteed bonds issued by banks to be refinanced until 2014).