Dateline: Chicago, 1st October 2024.Here’s a way of improving the payments infrastructure and extending inclusion by using circulating bank-issued cheques instead of cash as a means of exchange. I’ll call it the d-cheque scheme and I’ll explain it using paper as the implementation.SharePayments PushThe d-cheque scheme works in this way. Customers are given books of cheques that are preprinted with a maximum amount and protected with a simple anti-rewriting mechanism such as perforations with the same amount on them. To avoid the problem of cheques bouncing and the uncertainties related to clearing (and to obviate the need for any form of cheque guarantee card, as we used to have in the UK) the value of the cheques given to any customer is against money that is held in an interest-bearing account for them.Subscribe nowSo, for example, I would ask Citi for $100 in d-cheques. Citi then gives me a book of ten maximum $10 cheques. The $100 is moved from my checking account to an interest-bearing deposit account solely for the purpose of backing the cheques. The cheques would be valid for, say, two years.When I want to pay my gardener $20, I sign two of the cheques and give them to her. Now that the cheques have been signed by the owner, the gardener can use them in lieu of cash, up until the expiry date – no need to pay them into a bank account, which is the time-consuming and expensive part. She can use them to pay…Deposits And Cheques