Australia’s cheque system closes 30 June 2028. If your SMB still uses them, it’s time to move, says AusPayNet CEO Andy White.
You probably haven’t thought much about your cheque book lately. But if you’re running a small business in Australia and still using cheques for anything, it’s time to pay attention.
Australia’s payments industry has just confirmed a hard deadline. Personal, commercial, government and bank cheques will stop being issued entirely on 30 June 2028. That’s less than two years away. And if you’re holding cheques hoping to deposit them later, note this: from 30 September 2029, you won’t be able to deposit them at all.
The move signals the final chapter of a slow-motion exit that’s been playing out for a decade. Cheque payments in Australia have declined 15 to 30 percent annually for the past ten years. The latest snapshot, from April 2026, shows the value of cheques dropped 25 percent year-on-year. They now account for less than 0.1 percent of all payments made in the country.
This didn’t happen overnight. Australians have been gradually embracing faster, more convenient and increasingly secure digital payment methods. That shift has left cheques looking like a relic of an earlier era.
Most SMBs still aren’t ready
Here’s the thing though. While the broader economy has moved on from cheques, many small businesses haven’t yet. Anecdotal evidence suggests plenty of SMBs still use cheques to make and receive payments, prompting a call to action from Australia’s payments industry body, the Australian Payments Network (AusPayNet).
Andy White, CEO of AusPayNet, puts it plainly. “With the manual effort and long processing times required, cheques look outdated in our modern payments system, in which real-time payments are the norm,” White says. “But many small businesses still rely on cheques, and it is important they are supported in getting ready for the time when cheques are no longer available.”
The scale of cheque usage is harder to track than you’d think. But here’s a stark indicator: as of September 2025, Australians were holding an estimated 3.5 million bank cheques worth $820 million. And here’s the concerning bit: 80 percent of those cheques were more than three years old. That’s a lot of money sitting in drawers, undeposited and at risk of becoming worthless when the system closes.
“The significant amount of money in the form of unbanked bank cheques gathering dust in the bottom of drawers speaks volumes for the decline in cheque use,” White said. “We would urge people holding outstanding cheques to bank them well before the cheques system is closed.”
Keep up to date with our stories on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
