Eight-week trial for London stores
Asda will be the first UK supermarket to ban payment by cheque, if a trial starting today proves successful.

The supermarket giant is trialling the policy in 21 stores within Greater London. Customers will be able to use cheque books for the first three weeks, but only if they have no other method of payment.

The trial will last eight weeks, after which Asda will evaluate the results before deciding if it will be rolled out across the UK.

An Asda spokesman said: 'The idea behind it is to see whether it speeds up the time at the checkout. Cheques do take time and we know queues are a bugbear.'

Tesco said it was still accepting cheques and had no plans to stop in the foreseeable future.

Shell forecourts stopped accepting cheques in September last year.

Topics