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Waipā District Council Te Awamutu councillor Hazel Barnes said councils are being forced to follow banks when it comes to no longer accepting cheques. Pentecost said she understood older people were becoming “anxious and stressed” about how they were going to manage their finances. “So we want to work with other groups, charities and NGOs who also get their funding via cheques, to raise this issue higher.” One of those could be the Fundraising Institute of New Zealand, which said people who donated to charities were older and paid via cheque. It said some charities received up to 90 per cent of their income by cheque.