Outside India, the Gulf and South-East Asia, ChequeMaster comes with pre-added cheque layouts for banks in eight more countries: the UK, Canada, Australia, Cyprus, Mauritius, Nepal, Bangladesh and Argentina. Only one to three banks per country are pre-added, so this guide does two jobs. It sums up what you need to know about cheques in each country as of October 2026, and it explains how to add a layout for any bank, since ChequeMaster works with all of them.

One rule applies everywhere: get the currency and the words system right before you print. Lakh and crore belong to Nepal and Bangladesh here; every other country on this page uses million and billion.

United Kingdom

Pre-added layouts: Barclays, Lloyds.

  • Currency: pounds and pence, 2 decimals, million system. Dates are day first (DD/MM/YYYY).
  • Crossing: most UK cheque books come pre-printed with an "A/C payee" crossing, so the cheque can only be paid into the named payee's account.
  • Validity: no law sets an expiry date, but banks generally refuse cheques more than six months old.
  • Clearing: since the Image Clearing System rolled out in 2017-2018, cheques paid in on a working day are normally cleared by 23:59 the next working day.
  • Trend: cheque use is low and still falling, but cheques remain common for some business, legal and charity payments.

Canada

Pre-added layouts: Bank of Montreal, Royal Bank of Canada, TD.

  • Currency: Canadian dollars and cents, 2 decimals, million system.
  • Date: many Canadian cheques print the expected date order (for example Y Y Y Y M M D D) above the date boxes. Follow those labels exactly.
  • Validity: Payments Canada says cheques are considered stale-dated after six months, unless certified. Banks may still honour them but are not obliged to.
  • Post-dated cheques: should not be deposited before their date. A bank can return one deposited early up to the day before its date.
  • Trend: businesses still use cheques for rent, supplier payments and payroll in some sectors, but electronic transfers are taking over.

Australia

Pre-added layout: ANZ.

  • Currency: Australian dollars and cents, 2 decimals, million system, dates day first.
  • The cheque system is closing. Under the federal government's Cheques Transition Plan of November 2024, cheques stop being issued by 30 June 2028 and stop being accepted on 30 September 2029.
  • Validity: Australian cheques become stale 15 months after being drawn, which is why the two dates are 15 months apart.
  • ANZ: ANZ stopped offering cheque books to new accounts, and to existing accounts without one, from June 2024. Existing cheque book holders can still reorder for now.

If you still issue ANZ cheques, plan to move every regular payment to electronic methods well before mid-2028.

Cyprus

Pre-added layouts: Bank of Cyprus, Cyprus Cooperative Bank.

  • Currency: euros and cents, 2 decimals, million system, dates day first.
  • The Cooperative Bank no longer exists. In 2018 Hellenic Bank took over the Cyprus Cooperative Bank's performing loans and deposits, and its branch network passed to Hellenic in September 2018. Co-op customers were issued Hellenic Bank cheque books from 10 September 2018, as Cyprus Mail reported at the time. Keep the Co-op layout only for looking up or reprinting old records; for new cheques, build a layout from your current Hellenic Bank leaf.
  • Bounced cheques: the Central Bank of Cyprus keeps a Central Information Registry of issuers of dishonoured cheques. Issuing three or more dishonoured cheques within 12 months, or dishonoured cheques totalling over €2,000, puts the issuer on it.
  • Trend: cheque volumes are small and declining.

Mauritius

Pre-added layouts: Barclays (now Absa), The Mauritius Commercial Bank.

  • Currency: Mauritian rupees and cents, 2 decimals, million system.
  • Barclays is now Absa. Barclays Bank Mauritius Limited changed its name to Absa Bank (Mauritius) Limited in February 2020, according to the Bank of Mauritius public notice. The Barclays layout is the starting point for older Barclays-branded leaves; check it against your current Absa cheque and adjust if the design has changed.
  • Clearing: Mauritius has used cheque truncation since 2011. Banks send cheque images to the Port Louis Automated Clearing House at the Bank of Mauritius, which has run in full truncation mode since 4 February 2013.
  • Validity: confirm the period with your bank.

Nepal

Pre-added layouts: ICFC Finance, Nepal SBI Bank.

  • Currency: Nepalese rupees and paisa, 2 decimals, lakh and crore wording, as in India.
  • Clearing: cheques clear through Nepal Clearing House Limited's Electronic Cheque Clearing (ECC) system, regulated by Nepal Rastra Bank. Only MICR-encoded cheques are supported, so keep everything clear of the MICR line.
  • Validity: banks such as NIC Asia treat cheques older than 180 days as stale; government cheques have shorter validity.
  • Account payee: since July 2017, Nepal Rastra Bank has required account payee cheques for payments above Rs 1 million.
  • Dates: Nepal officially uses the Bikram Sambat calendar. ChequeMaster prints Gregorian dates, so confirm with your bank which calendar it expects on cheques.

Bangladesh

Pre-added layout: United Commercial Bank.

  • Currency: taka and poisha, 2 decimals, lakh and crore wording.
  • Clearing: Bangladesh Bank's Bangladesh Automated Cheque Processing System (BACPS), running since October 2010, clears cheques from images.
  • Bounced cheques: under Section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881 as it applies in Bangladesh, dishonour can be punished with up to one year's imprisonment, a fine of up to three times the cheque amount, or both. See why cheques bounce.
  • Format: Bangladeshi cheques look much like Indian ones, so an Indian layout is a close starting point for a Bangladeshi bank that is not listed.

Argentina

Pre-added layout: Banco Santander Río (now Santander Argentina).

  • Name: Santander Río began rebranding to Santander in June 2019. The layout is for the Santander Río design; check it against your current leaf.
  • Currency: pesos and centavos, 2 decimals, million system. Cheques are written in Spanish; ChequeMaster prints the amount in words in English, so ask your bank whether that is acceptable.
  • Validity: under the Cheques Law (Ley 24.452), a cheque must be presented within 30 days of its date. For a deferred-payment cheque (cheque de pago diferido), the 30 days run from the payment date.
  • Trend: the electronic cheque (ECHEQ) now carries more than half the value of cheques cleared, and the central bank has said it is evaluating ending paper peso cheques.

Any bank, any country: build your own layout

ChequeMaster works with any bank's cheque, of any size, in any country. The banks named above are only the layouts that come pre-added; for every other bank you add one layout, which takes a few minutes:

  1. Scan a blank (or cancelled) cheque leaf from your own cheque book.
  2. In the layout editor, import the scan and enter the cheque's width and height.
  3. Drag each field (date, payee, amount in words, amount in figures, crossing) onto the matching position on the image.
  4. Set the font and size per field. Use a smaller size where the words line is short.
  5. Create a cheque book on the new layout with the right number range, then test on plain paper against a real leaf.

The full walkthrough is in how to create a cheque layout, and fixing cheque printing alignment covers fine-tuning. Once saved, a custom layout works like a pre-loaded one for every future cheque book on that design.

Before the first cheque, set the currency, decimal digits (2 for every currency on this page), the words system and the date format in Settings.