CBS enabled banks should issue only payable at par cheques: RBI

Decision was made after taking the availability of processing infrastructure for clearing outstation cheques

The Reserve Bank has asked all CBS (core banking solutions) enabled banks to issue only 'payable at par' or 'multi-city'
cheques to their customers to bring about more efficiency in cheque clearing.

This is after taking into consideration the availability of processing infrastructure for clearing outstation cheques at all clearing locations
across the country and to bring about further efficiency in cheque clearing, it said.

"... All CBS enabled banks are hereby advised to issue only 'payable at par'/ 'multi-city' CTS 2010 Standard cheques to all eligible customers,"
RBI said in a notification today.

It further said since such cheques (payable at par) are cleared as local cheques in clearing houses, customers should not be levied extra
charges.

RBI also asked the banks to put in place the appropriate board approved risk management procedures based on risk categorisation of accounts. An updated board approved policy of banks in this regard may be put on their web-sites, it said.

While a few banks are issuing 'payable at par'/ 'multi- city' cheques with value cap, some other banks issue these cheques as per category of
account (High Net-worth Customers), it said.

Leveraging the CBS, banks issue 'payable at par'/ 'multi-city' cheques to select customers with separate transaction codes (29, 30 and 31) by
putting in place infrastructure for processing such cheques at all CBS enabled branches, it said.