Old bank cheques to continue for three more months

RBI extends deadline for CTS 2010 cheques

Banks will continue to accept existing cheques for another three months, till March 31, 2013. The plan for replacement of the current cheque books with new features that was to start from January 1, 2013, across India, has been postponed by the Reserve Bank of India.

This means bank account holders can use their old format cheques for another three months to give time to all to switch over to the new CTS 2010 cheques with uniform security features. “Taking into consideration representations, it has been decided to extend the time up to March 31, 2013, for banks to ensure withdrawal of non-CTS 2010 Standard cheques and replace them with CTS-2010 Standard cheques,” the RBI said in a notification.

Though almost all the banks have confirmed that they are issuing only multi-city or payable at par CTS-2010 standard cheques at present, representations have been received from various stakeholders requesting for extension of the time beyond December 31, 2012, the RBI said. Banks in Delhi have already migrated to the new system since last year. But for all regions, RBI had fixed December 31 as the last date for phasing out non-CTS (Cheque Truncation System) 2010 cheques. The homogeneity in security features of CTS 2010 cheques will act as deterrent against frauds, and the fixed field placement specifications facilitate straight-through-processing at drawee banks’ end through the use of optical or image character recognition technology.