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A cheque (British English) or check (American English); is a document that orders a bank, building society (or credit union) to pay a specific amount of money from a person's account to the person in whose name the cheque has been issued. The person writing the cheque, known as the drawer, has a transaction banking account (often called a current, cheque, chequing, checking, or share draft account) where the money is held. The drawer writes various details including the monetary amount, date, and a payee on the cheque, and signs it, ordering their bank, known as the drawee, to pay the amount of money stated to the payee.

Although forms of cheques have been in use since ancient times and at least since the 9th century, they became a highly popular non-cash method for making payments during the 20th century and usage of cheques peaked. By the second half of the 20th century, as cheque processing became automated, billions of cheques were issued annually; these volumes peaked in or around the early 1990s.^[1] Since then cheque usage has fallen, being replaced by electronic payment systems, such as debit cards and credit cards. In an increasing number of countries cheques have either become a marginal payment system or have been completely phased out.^[2][3]

Nature of a cheque

A cheque is a negotiable instrument instructing a financial institution to pay a specific amount of a specific currency from a specified transactional account held in the drawer's name with that institution. Both the drawer and payee may be natural persons or legal entities. Cheques are order instruments, and are not in general payable simply to the bearer as bearer instruments are, but must be paid to the payee. In some countries, such as the US, the payee may endorse the cheque, allowing them to specify a third party to whom it should be paid.

Cheques are a type of bill of exchange that were developed as a way to make payments without the need to carry large amounts of money. Paper money evolved from promissory notes, another form of negotiable instrument similar to cheques in that they were originally a written order to pay the given amount to whoever had it in their possession (the "bearer").

Spelling and etymology

Check is the original spelling in the English language.^[4][5] The newer spelling, cheque (from the French), is believed to have come into use around 1828, when the switch was made by James William Gilbart in his Practical Treatise on Banking.^[5] The spellings check, checque, and cheque were used interchangeably from the 17th century until the 20th century.^[6] However, since the 19th century, in the Commonwealth and Ireland, the spelling cheque (from the French word chèque) has become standard for the financial instrument, while check is used only for other meanings, thus distinguishing the two definitions in writing.^{[nb 1]}

In American English, the usual spelling for both is check.^[8]

Etymological dictionaries attribute the financial meaning of check to come from "a check against forgery", with the use of "check" to mean "control" stemming from the check used in chess, a term which came into English through French, Latin, Arabic, and ultimately from the Persian word shah, or "king".^[9][10]

History

The cheque had its origins in the ancient banking system, in which bankers would issue orders at the request of their customers, to pay money to identified payees. Such an order was referred to as a bill of exchange. The use of bills of exchange facilitated trade by eliminating the need for merchants to carry large quantities of currency (for example, gold) to purchase goods and services.

Early years

There is early evidence of using bill of exchange. In India, during the Maurya Empire (from 321 to 185 BC), a commercial instrument called the adesha was in use, which was an order on a banker desiring him to pay the money of the note to a third person.^[11]

The ancient Romans are believed to have used an early form of cheque known as praescriptiones in the 1st century BC.^{[12][ISBN missing]}

Beginning in the third century AD, banks in Persian territory began to issue letters of credit.^[13] These letters were termed čak, meaning "document" or "contract".^[14] The čak became the sakk later used by traders in the Abbasid Caliphate and other Arab-ruled lands.^[15] Transporting a paper sakk was more secure than transporting money. In the ninth century, a merchant in one country could cash a sakk drawn on his bank in another country.^[16] The Persian poet, Ferdowsi, used the term "cheque" several times in his famous book, Shahnameh, when referring to the Sasanid dynasty.

Ibn Hawqal, living in the 10th century, records the use of a cheque written in Aoudaghost which was worth 42,000 dinars.^[17][18]

In the 13th century the bill of exchange was developed in Venice as a legal device to allow international trade without the need to carry large amounts of gold and silver. Their use subsequently spread to other European countries.

In the early 1500s, to protect large accumulations of cash, people in the Dutch Republic began depositing their money with "cashiers". These cashiers held the money for a fee. Competition drove cashiers to offer additional services including paying money to any person bearing a written order from a depositor to do so. They kept the note as proof of payment. This concept went on to spread to England and elsewhere.^[19]

Modern era

By the 17th century, bills of exchange were being used for domestic payments in England. Cheques, a type of bill of exchange, then began to evolve. Initially, they were called drawn notes, because they enabled a customer to draw on the funds that he or she had in the account with a bank and required immediate payment. These were handwritten, and one of the earliest known still to be in existence was drawn on Messrs Morris and Clayton, scriveners and bankers based in the City of London, and dated 16 February 1659.^[20]

In 1717, the Bank of England pioneered the first use of a pre-printed form. These forms were printed on "cheque paper" to prevent fraud, and customers had to attend in person and obtain a numbered form from the cashier. Once written, the cheque was brought back to the bank for settlement. The suppression of banknotes in eighteenth-century England further promoted the use of cheques.^[21]

Until about 1770, an informal exchange of cheques took place between London banks. Clerks of each bank visited all the other banks to exchange cheques while keeping a tally of balances between them until they settled with each other. Daily cheque clearing began around 1770 when the bank clerks met at the Five Bells, a tavern in Lombard Street in the City of London, to exchange all their cheques in one place and settle the balances in cash. This was the first bankers' clearing house.

Provincial clearinghouses were established in major cities throughout the UK to facilitate the clearing of cheques on banks in the same town. Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Hull, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham, Sheffield, and Southampton all had their own clearinghouses.^[22]

In America, the Bank of New York began issuing cheques after its establishment by Alexander Hamilton in 1784.^[23] The oldest surviving example of a complete American chequebook from the 1790s was discovered by a family in New Jersey. The documents are in some ways similar to modern-day cheques, with some data pre-printed on sheets of paper alongside blank spaces for where other information could be hand-written as needed.^[24]

It is thought that the Commercial Bank of Scotland was the first bank to personalize its customers' cheques, in 1811, by printing the name of the account holder vertically along the left-hand edge. In 1830 the Bank of England introduced books of 50, 100, and 200 forms and counterparts, bound or stitched. These cheque books became a common format for the distribution of cheques to bank customers.

In the late 19th century, several countries formalized laws regarding cheques. The UK passed the Bills of Exchange Act 1882, and India passed the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881;^[25] which both covered cheques. Zdroj:https://en.wikipedia.org?pojem=Bank_cheques
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