Cheques will not be scrapped in 2018 because there are no better alternatives

London, July 13 (ANI): Banks have dropped plans to axe the cheque by 2018, as they don't see viable alternatives.

The 11th-hour reprieve will come as a relief to millions of consumers and businesses who wrote more than one billion cheques in Britain last year, the Daily Mail reports.

Pressure will now mount on retailers such as John Lewis and Tesco, which have refused to take cheques ahead of their planned phasing out, to start accepting them again.

The Payments Council - made up of financial institutions - said it had ditched plans to drop the cheque after listening to more than 600 furious campaign groups, charities, politicians and businesses.

Banks had argued that cheques were more open to fraud and more costly to process than online or credit card payments.

But Richard North, chairman of the Payments Council, announced yesterday that the target to scrap cheques by October 31, 2018, had been ditched as no suitable alternative had been found.

'It's in the DNA of the Payments Council to consult and listen to all those people who actually make payments and use cheques,' he said. (ANI)