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UK businesses lose £550m a year in missing cheques

05 September 2016

By forgetting to pay in or losing cheques, UK business owners are losing as much as £550m a year.

The research by Barclays Business Banking found that one in five owners forget to pay in cheques at least once a week, missing out on an average of £740. In total it’s estimated that around a million businesses are missing out on being paid on a regular basis.

Despite many changes in the way people can bank, cheques have remained a popular method of payment. More than 90m cheques were paid in to Barclays accounts over the last 12 months, with a value in excess of £140bn. 

We want to take the hassle out of cheque depositing for busy business owners so they can pay in their cheque instantly through their smartphone or tablet.

Ian Rand

CEO of Business Banking at Barclays

To help prevent these losses our cheque imaging technology enables customers to pay in Barclays cheques at any time using your smartphone - making one of the world’s oldest forms of payment more compatible with the demands of modern life.

Ian Rand, CEO of Business Banking at Barclays, said: “No business should miss out on their hard earned takings but the £550m lost each year by SMEs losing or forgetting to deposit their cheques highlights the scale of the problem. We want to take the hassle out of cheque depositing for busy business owners so they can pay in their cheque instantly through their smartphone or tablet.”

The mobile cheque imaging pilot, which we’ve played a key role in bringing to the UK public, has so far seen more than 57,000 customers registered and over £3m paid into Barclays accounts.

Find out more about our mobile cheque imaging service from "the archives: the evolution of the cheque".

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