About twenty years ago, there were a lot of boring men who would tell you about the faster route to Borington if you turn left on Boring Road and take the Boringville Bypass. And how Mrs Thatcher might have been a bit strident but she had the right ideas even if she was a woman. If you caught them between pints of old Stoatwalloper and before they started rambling on about how old Enoch talked a lot of sense, they would tell you about the evils of direct debits. How no-one sensible would use them, and therefore they would never catch on, and they were sticking with standing orders thank you very much.
Now, a huge proportion of the population doesn't give it a second thought, and energy, council tax, gyms, magazine subscriptions, whatever, are all paid by DD. There are 28 on our joint account, ranging from the NCT to Private Eye to the Council Tax. I doubt we're that unusual.
Time moves on. Some people will decide that they don't like that. But there's a limit to how much society needs to organise itself to accommodate them. Cheques aren't going away yet, but the main risk which guarantee cards - and if you want to hear about people, often women, stuck with horrid debts because their partner, usually a man, buggered off and wrote a load of cheques on the overdraft as he went and caught her under joint and several liability, ask your local bank manager - is stopping. But cheques have had their card marked, to mix a metaphor, and over time, they're going away. All the "but I use it for..." are arguments that apply, with changes, to telegrams and cassettes and carbon paper and banda copiers, and the rest of the detritus of the past.