Cheques or checks

miniature cheque book
© F H Powell 2012

If you have used our web shop, we hope that you found it an easy and hassle free experience. As with all online transactions the key to being able of offer this kind of service is the wide availability of payment cards. These broadly fall into two types; credit cards where the value of the purchase is charged at a later date or debit cards where the transaction is charged to the buyers bank account immediately.

Prior to the rise in popularity of credit cards (the first recognised bank card was issued in 1966 when The Bank of America issued what was later to become known as a Visa card) the cheque (check in the US) was the most popular alternative to cash. A cheque is a form of Bill of Exchange, that put simply is an order to pay money to a receiver or payee. The birth of the cheque goes back to early banking institutions of the 9th century. By the 1900’s they were the most common method of enacting monetary transaction with 1990 seeing the greatest use at 11 million cheques per day according to the UK Payments Administration. However, the popularity of the cheque is in decline with 3.1 million per day issued in 2010 and the UK Payments Administration forecasting only 1.6 million per day by 2018. There have been recent discussions by banks and other financial institutions regarding withdrawing cheques altogether, but this has been met with opposition by consumers.

So whatever the fate of the cheque you can preserve a bit of history in your own dolls house with 1:12th and 1:24th chequebooks or chequebook kits from our web shop