Plain-English definitions of cheque terms, from crossed cheques to positive pay.
22 articles
A cheque you write to yourself to withdraw cash from your own account. Effectively a withdrawal slip you can hand to someone else.
Banks clear cheques from a scanned image instead of physically moving the paper. It is why the Indian cheque format is standardised.
How long a cheque is valid (3 months in India, 6 months in the UAE and many other countries), what a stale cheque is, whether it can be revalidated, and what to do if you hold or issued one.
A bearer cheque is payable to whoever presents it at the bank. Convenient, and the riskiest kind of cheque to lose.
A cheque dated in the future. Standard for rent and instalments across the Gulf and India, and a scheduling problem if you issue many.
A cheque with two lines through it and "CANCELLED" written across. It proves your account details — it cannot be used to take money.
Signing a cheque over to somebody else. Widely restricted in practice, and ruled out entirely by an account payee crossing.
A cheque return memo is the bank's slip explaining why a cheque came back unpaid. What it contains, the common Indian CTS return reason codes, the Gulf equivalent, and why its date matters for a legal notice.
The tightest form of crossing. The money can only reach the named payee's own bank account — it cannot be cashed or passed on.
One individual cheque from a cheque book. Counting them correctly matters when you set up printing.
You tell the bank the details of a large cheque before it is presented. The bank checks the presented cheque against what you declared.
A field-by-field tour of a cheque, and which parts you fill in versus which the bank pre-prints.
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