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Mike, I too think the issue is more centred on consumers than corporates and that innovation is required.

OK, so corporates still use checks.  But they are also best placed to go fully electronic, if they were really minded to.  There are some weird exceptions but they tend to have a 'consumer' flavour (and result from the general absence of that alternative instrument to pay someone - cash).   Examples are (1) your employee has no bank account, so they need an instrument to go and cash (2) you need to make a small value payment there and then without going through a vendor set up routine.

It is for me consumers that need the check because it is a simple way of settling a liability without having to set up the payee electronically - basically; you sub contract all that hassle to the banks. 

Imagine a window cleaner doing 50 jobs a week and charging 50 x £25; that's 50 electronic receipts of £25.  But, if you only get 49 receipts just how do you find out who didn't pay? (I assume like the corporate world, a payment reference is unlikely)  So, generally, a check does the payment job and is also a remittance.  (1) you have some certainty you have been paid and (2) you know exactly who paid you.

Innovation should do the job - I can see mobile phones / devices getting there in the main.  A blocker will be consumer apathy - I just can't be bothered sometimes to trawl through all the detail, check and double check the information to make a payment.  Just stick a check in the post and move on.

Its a good point. 

Fundamentally, companies have to step up to the plate and take action to secure future talent, especially in technology.  There are good commercial reasons for doing so, as you say mostly around the cost of buying in pre-trained talent later.  But you also get fresh thinking from which to innovate.

We commenced an entry level graduate recruitment programme recently as an investment in the future.  We've just recruited our first 4 (UK) technology graduates and will continue to do so.

More companies need to get back in the market for new talent, and do so before the future arrives.

Working alongside universities to secure the best talent (and buy in) is a positive approach.

Gary

Now that is a great newspaper title - ever thought of a career in ...

I think they did hack it overall.  Summed up in their own style by the live tweets of Alan Sugar, Piers Morgan and, well, Billy Bragg actually.

Share price rose on pie impact.

This is a good point and I think perspective in general.  My best service providers are the ones that don't talk to me - BUT I can easily talk to them.  It's a pull relationship and that works fine for me.

I have to say that after over 30 years, my bank remains on a pull relationship and service is great, even if I never can remember my memorable word.

Control of personal identifiers for travel springs to mind - ESTA issued by the US for travel to the US.  Visas for other countries - that's your problem!

Hope the Google bank will sort out the 'slow' issue currently affecting their UK home page.  That weird moving Google Doodle sure is disrupting my user experience today!

I worry that SWIFT will achieve a great standard, that just doesn't get adopted.

Looking closer to home, how about making global IBAN adoption work first.  Great idea, great standard, great...for Europe.

The recent Amazon algorithm issue caught my eye - with a widely reported sell price escalated to $23million.  CNN for one reporting: "Amazon seller lists book at $23,698,655.93 -- plus shipping"

That's what can happen to markets when machines takes over.  Of course valuing a book is easier for humans than equities - you have a rough idea of worth so you don't actually buy at those prices.  But its harder with things that you don't necessarily yet understand, such as equities and even tulips, so the market becomes real (or a false real, if there is such a thing) and people do buy. 

It does worry me that a trader can start up a sell algorithm, to say hedge a holding, and then assume the algo technology will identify when it is moving into dangerous (whole of market moving) territory and stop.  The absence of inherent safety parameters (like say checking on the % change in price over time as a check) may lead to a market moving significantly for an artificial reason.

I guess the FSA should be on the case.  I'd like to think the requirements around allowing a human access to a live exchange would apply equally to technology - you just have to know when to stop sometimes and unless you tell it, the technology won't.

Ploughing through that code is going to be a tough one though and I doubt they will ever find the wood for the trees.  Suspending that part of the market when trading looks really odd (through technology I guess) is probably the best you can hope for.

We are happy to use AMEX to pay suppliers and many will take it - good for airmiles to use on business when you rack up £20k of spend at a time on equipment etc.  £1m spend pa is a lot of air miles!

Smaller suppliers are put off by the higher AMEX fees but I think this is more a perceived higher cost than anything that makes a real difference.