A client of HSBC Bermuda feels customers have been left high and dry after the bank ran out of cheques.

“I am just peeved that HSBC hasn’t informed their clients,” said the customer, who did not wish to be named. “They are fully cognizant of who uses them. I pay $1.75 every time I write a cheque and then another fee to maintain my current account.”

The client, a retired bank executive, uses several chequing accounts to manage his personal finances and several properties. He found out about a chequebook problem at the bank only when he went to get new ones.

He called the bank’s help desk and was told HSBC Bermuda was in the process of changing to a new chequebook provider, and did not know when chequebooks would be available again.

“They have left their clients up in the air,” he said.

The bank told The Royal Gazette it has had production issues.

“Our Bermuda-based cheque supplier changed their support model for HSBC resulting in the bank having to engage the services of a new local supplier,” a spokesman for the firm said.

HSBC Bermuda is now in the final stages of testing to confirm that the production environment meets expectations and protects customer data effectively. It plans to resume cheque production at the end of September.

Cheque usage has been in sharp decline globally, replaced by digital payments methods.

Several countries have stopped the use of cheques altogether, including Denmark, Poland and Finland.

HSBC said: “We recognise that many of our customers still value cheques as a payment channel and continue to work with our customer service teams to ensure that our customers can both now and in the future utilise all of our alternative payment channels.”

The client described himself as “old-school”.

“Cheques are my main source of paying things,” he said. “Every day I reconcile my bank accounts. I know which cheques are outstanding. You cannot tell me that the world stops because you cannot get a printer. At the same time, I am paying $40 a month for each of my chequing accounts. What do I do in the interim?”

He said many places in Bermuda have stopped accepting cheques because of fears of fraud, or the cheque bouncing owing to insufficient funds.

He felt that ultimately these institutions paid more in fees to accept credit card payments than they would accepting cheques.