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How paper cheques are critically important to our human right to autonomy. Belgians will lose this right soon. (fedia.io)
submitted 1 month ago by to c/right_to_unplug@sopuli.xyz
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Crossposted from https://fedia.io/m/humanrights@crazypeople.online/t/4433054

Belgium plans to do away with paper cheques. Apparently no one is fighting this. The eagerness to do away with paper cheques can only be attributed to addiction to convenience without regard to the consequences.

Once paper cheques are gone, there will be no way to survive without banks. Even if you walk away from your job and go on social aid, the social aid has no way to reach you without a bank account. Paper cheques are the sole means having personal autonomy from banks.

Some pensioners still receive their pension payment as a paper cheque, which they can cash without having a bank account. Belgium is taking this away.

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[–] [S] 4 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Belgians can cash a cheque at the post office without having a bank account. It has become gratis just recently as well, so the bank does not make a dime on that transaction. The post office subcontracts to a bank to do the electronic portion of the transaction but it imposes no bank patronage on the recipient. It is currently the sole way to avoid patronage of banks and keep your autonomy in belgium because paying salaries in cash was banned in Belgium.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago* (2 children)

    Doesn't that just means that the company running your postal service is also running a bank? At least that's how it works with the German Postbank.

    edit: it does. The BPost Group also runs BPost Bank.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 1 month ago*

    Bpost banque subcontracts to BNP Parabas. Using a paper cheque to get access to cash does not require patronising either of them. You do not pay them a dime and you do not sign a contract. The profitable data they get from the person presenting the cheque is minimal. There is no interesting data to abuse or exfiltrate in a breach.

    When you send a bank transfer, the money is in limbo for a period of time. The money leaves the payer’s account and sits in the bank’s own account where the bank earns interest. After some time, the money eventually finally moves into the recipient’s account. That limbo time is quite profitable for the bank. So the bank tries to keep that limbo time as long as legally possible. The bank loves your patronage.

    With paper cheques, the money is in the posession of the payer up until the cheque is furnished. At that moment, cash is paid to the recipient. There is no profitable limbo time in this case.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago

    As with is in Portugal. Our national post moved so much money it was, at some point, privatized and split into postal service and a bank, so that the money could be handled according to new regulation.

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