I know that there are jurisdictions that are moving to abolish cheques, but I don't see how it's retro to use a cheque when the terminals are down.

I think it was just last year that a Rogers outage took down most payment terminals across Canada for a couple of days. The local (rural) businesses just did business as usual, except that instead of one or two cheques a day, it was all cheques, all day.

We still use cheques regularly because seasonal and farm-based businesses and lack of internet make cheques the only viable way to conduct business. It's not like I'm going to run to the city to take out the cash I'd need.