From next week, NZ Post, New Zealand's Inland Revenue department, the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) and Kiwibank will all no longer be accepting cheques. Kiwibank is the first bank in New Zealand to ditch cheques. It says for the last five years the use of cheques at Kiwibank declined at a rate of 20 per cent year-on-year. CEO Steve Jurkovich told Newsroom it came down to a "decision about whether you should invest millions of dollars in a sunset technology. "Actually, it's more than $10 million over the next five to seven years, as cheque-processing technology comes to the end of its useful life and licences and service agreements need to be renewed."The bank has been working with the Digital Inclusion Alliance Aotearoa's Stepping UP programme - a community-based digital skills initiative funded mainly by lottery grants. It runs a vintage bus (called DORA) that drives around the regions offering short courses to elderly people and also runs courses in local libraries. Inland Revenue and ACC have also seen cheque use fall - the numbers of cheques they received dropped by 20-25 per cent from 2018 to 2019. The opposition National Party is accusing the Government of "disenfranchising quite a large proportion of the New Zealand population", and is launching a petition calling for Government departments and agencies to continue accepting cheques.