National Payments Plan (NPP) - ‘e-Day’ – 19th September 2014

The National Payments Plan (NPP) was launched in April 2013 and aims at making savings of €1bn annually to the Irish economy by increasing the use of electronic forms of payment such as debit cards and electronic banking. Ireland continues to rely heavily on cash and other paper payment instruments, and lags significantly behind our European peers in the use of more efficient electronic payment instruments. Increased use of more efficient payment methods would be expected to lead to increased competitiveness, efficiency and security. 

 e-Day, set for the 19th of September 2014,  is the date from which Government Departments, Local Authorities and State Agencies will no longer use cheques in their dealings with businesses.  According to the NPP, the particular focus of e-Day is to encourage SMEs to migrate from cheque usage as they are either issuers or receivers of more than 60% of all cheques in Ireland.  A shift from cheques to electronic as a preferred method of payment will result in reduced costs and improved cash-flow for the overall business sector.

The e-Day cheque reduction initiative is one of the recommendations contained in the National Payments Plan.

See https://www.centralbank.ie/paycurr/Pages/NationalPaymentsPlan.aspx for further details