Bounced cheques

All sorts of arguments and suggestions are being floated on the subject of dishonoured cheques. Some are advocating the banks should keep a list of persons whose cheques are dishonoured. This would only close the door after the horse has bolted and would create more work for the banks. Who would pay for this newly created bureaucracy?

Others want to change the law but that would not solve anything and would not protect the payees as victims of bounced cheques.

What is absent from the equation is the banks' responsibilities in this regard. England has solved the problem of bounced cheques by ensuring that all the cheques drawn on accounts are guaranteed for payment by a bank card. Thus no cheque is accepted by anyone unless it is accompanied by a Bank Card and its details noted on the back of the cheque.

A bank card guarantees the responsibility of the bank to ensure payment of the amount to the payee and not by the drawer of that cheque. The banks may not agree with that idea here in Malta but then they are over-stringent and over the top with their requirements. And, yet, it is they who know their clients' credit worthiness, it is they that have full control and discretion to whom they should issue cheque books. It is they that inflict upon the public rogues who take advantage of others.

It is also the banks that are fully equipped with modern technology that enables them to keep track of bounced cheques and of their drawers.

To expect the public to chase the shadows of those who betray a payee's trust especially when the banks are reluctant to provide information to innocent payees in the name of confidentiality, is to abandon their clients and to remain aloof from what ought to be their responsibility as a public institution.

If England and other places have managed to achieve success with bank cards, why not here in Malta?