Banks to enter MICR era

A teller attends to customers at a bank in Dhaka. Bangladesh Bank yesterday directed banks to issue MICR cheques that can be verified online.Photo: STAR

Clients of banks will get their cheques cleared within one working day as automated clearing houses will be introduced across the country on November 1 and machine-readable cheques will be in place by the time.
The traditional cheques take at least three days to be cleared.
The central bank yesterday directed the banks to issue the machine-readable magnetic ink character recognition (MICR) cheques, which can be verified online. Bangladesh Bank (BB) has also asked the banks to give their branches necessary guidelines.
The BB said no clearing house in the country will accept non-MICR cheques after November 1.
The BB in a circular also said MICR cheques will have to be issued from all branches of the banks in the district towns by August 19.
The banks will have to phase out such cheques by October 31.
The central bank on May 31 this year stopped clearing all non-MICR cheques at about 1100 branches under Dhaka Clearing House.
After a trial run on August 4, the automated clearing house will formally start functioning in Dhaka.
The BB in a letter on Sunday said the activities of the manual clearing house for cheque processing will be kept suspended on August 4 as a preparatory measure to introduce Bangladesh Automated Cheque Processing System (BACPS).
The central bank sent the letter containing five-point guidelines to all the commercial banks. The BB circular said the manual clearing of cheques will remain suspended for one day to check the integrity and fitness of BACPS and all settlements of the instruments sent by the banks will be made through the automated system.
If any cheque remains uncleared on the day, it will be sent to the paying bank.
BB officials said automated cheque processing system is going to be introduced in all the banks in Dhaka after September. As part of it, necessary preparatory works are going on, they said.