Electronic cheque clearing in offing

The central bank has prepared guidelines for Banks Network Requirements that will help clear cheques electronically through Nepal Clearing House.
The central bank, along with commercial banks and Smart Choice Technologies (SCT) have set up Nepal Clearing House in December. The agreement was signed with Jordan-based software developing company ProgresSoft Corporation to develop the software for Cheque Truncation System (CTS) in the country. The new system is expected to start operation from next fiscal year.
At present‚ a single cheque clearance takes anything between two days to months as it is done manually by the central bank.
The customers have to wait for weeks for transaction to materialise. The cheques had to get to the central bank’s clearing office‚ then the staff there clears the cheques‚ then permit the banks to make and receive transfers.
The process being time-consuming‚ general public avoids‚ making cheque payments of the bank other than the one from which cheque has been drawn.
Nepal Clearing House will introduce and implement CTS that will provide automated cheque clearance service so that cheques will be cleared within seconds so that beneficiaries can access the fund the same day.
The automated system is supposed to make whole cheque clearing system less tedious‚ quicker and efficient‚ encouraging people to rely more on payments through cheques.
Nepal Bankers’ Association (NBA), along with Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) and other financial institutions, has established Nepal Clearing House that has has 60 per cent share of NBA. Similarly, SCT has 15 per cent, NRB has 10 per cent and the remaining 15 per cent shares will be distributed between Nepal Development Banks’ Association and Nepal Finance Compnaies’ Association.