A Postal Clearing Service

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29270, 30 July 1960, Page 12

A Postal Clearing Service

The decision announced in the Budget to introduce a postal clearing service has now been elaborated by the PostmasterGeneral (Mr Moohah), who clearly expects it to revolutionise commercial payments practices in this country. A similar service, operated in the Netherlands and other European countries, was explained to the Monetary Commission of 1955 by Mr D. J. Janus, and the commission recommended that the scheme should be investigated by appropriate' departmental officers. The decision to proceed is presumably the result of this investigation. As described to the commission by Mr Janus, individuals or firms who have established special credit accounts at the Post Office make payments to others in the scheme by making out a slip upon which the clearing service debits and credits the respective accounts and sends both parties a statement of what has been done. This statement is accepted as a receipt for payment. No stamp duty is payable, no internal exchange is charged, a large number of payments can be made by filling in a single slip, the risk of forgery is reduced to a minimum, book-work is reduced, and clearance is accelerated. Salaries and pensions can be paid in this way. The interest earned by the clearing service by lending money to the Government meets all charges. As Mr Nordmeyer said, a scheme of this sort would have “ a considerable impact" on the future of the banking

system in New Zealand. Of course, the trading banks may well anticipate competition from a postal clearing service by adopting some of its attractive features and perhaps by adding inducements of their own.

One reservation many persons will hold about the postal clearing service is the ability of the Post Office to handle it. As State services have developed in the last 20 years, so has the tendency to burden the Post Office with more and more duties. The primary function of the Post Office is to handle postages; and - telephone and telegraph services are ancillaries to the communications system. The Post Office has also become a savings bank. On top of these functions, the Post Office has become the agent of government departments to the extent that service to them is probably the major part of its work on many days. Last year’s report showed that this one department performed no fewer than 34 agency services, including such major tasks as motor registration and the distribution of social security benefits and pensions. Some suburban post offices in Christchurch with

limited facilities are hopelessly overburdened at times, and so great are demands generally that it is astonishing that the Post Office has kept its normal services to a high standard of efficiency. Is it wise to load the Post Office with yet another heavy duty?. If so, it would be advisable to relieve the department of some of the outside work it is doing.