Bank of Uganda Launches Automated cheque clearing system

In a normal busy week, it takes one a period of three to five days to have a cheque cleared. This is worsens when it involves more than one bank. Most of the businesses in the country run on cheques, which has helped several of them to pay off their company bills and make some transactions from particular banks around the country.

However, now the Bank of Uganda has come up with a new automated clearing system of cheques–a cheque will be cleared within 24 hours regardless of  its nature.

According to central bank, the new Automated Clearing System, which will be rolled out on April 20, will remove the physical movement of cheques between banks and across bank branches thus speeding up the process of cheque clearance, settlement among banks and realization of funds by beneficiaries.

With the new cheque clearing system, cheque images will be used  instead of exchanging actual physical cheques. The system is aimed at  reducing  risks involved in cheque clearing as electronic clearing is less vulnerable to fraud than manual cheque clearing, as well as shorten the whole process hence saving time.

“Under the new automated clearing system, cheques presented for payment will be scanned by the collecting banks and the resulting high definition images  together with relevant electronic date  will be transmitted electronically to the paying banks through the clearing house,