Though checks now trail debit and credit cards as a payment method and have been losing ground every year (a topic covered here in blogs past), we could still be writing them for a long time to come.

That's according to a recent post on the blog of Celent, an organization that consults to international financial institutions. It notes that the U.K. wants to phase out checks (or “cheques,” as they say) by 2018. How soon might the U.S. follow suit? Probably not before 2028 at the earliest, suggests the post’s author, Bob Meara, in part because the U.S. got a later start and has a more complicated banking system.