Fees will rise for the dwindling band of cheque users, the Australian Payments Clearing Association noted yesterday, as it released a report on the pathway open to the banking industry and its customers to dispense with this form of payment."Providers and users can continue to make their own decisions about cheque use," APCA said in a report on a consultation process conducted over the last year. While acknowledging that cheques will remain, for now, APCA pointed out that "users may be charged fees as a result of an increase in marginal costs."Unit costs for processing cheques must be rising quickly.In the course of the year APCA took undertaking its consultation, the number of cheques declined by 14 per cent, to 235 million. And the value of cheques declined by 15 per cent, to A$820 billion.Over the same period, the number of direct entry payments climbed 24 per cent, to 3.1 trillion.Two recalcitrant groups of cheques users - those in superannuation and property transfers - are already the subject of efforts to steer them towards electronic payments.The more difficult groups of users that prefer cheques are mostly older people and community organisations whose business methods have not changed much in 50 years.APCA said that it will encourage banks to "consider ways of improving access" to electronic payments for these groups of customers.There will also be efforts to bring down the costs of cheque processing, though the industry took many of the major gains eight years ago when three banks pooled and outsourced this process to Fiserv. The firm's 12-year contract with CBA, NAB and Westpac lasts until 2017.