Checks to become extinct in UK by 2018

Here's an interesting piece of news I found -- the UK Payments Council has set a date of Oct 31, 2018 to phase out checks! The Council apparently will be shutting down the inter-bank check clearing house by that date. This is the strongest move I've heard of to push for online payments.

The author brings up an interesting point of what happens to the older generation who just don't want to go online? For e-commerce players, this is good news as this will open up more interest especially with direct bank debit payment options as it doesn't have the disadvantages of credit cards, and yet, have all the advantages of being able to do realtime payments.