Have you checked if your old cheque book is CTS-2010 compliant? Indian banks will only accept Cheque Truncation System (CTS) – 2010 complaint cheques after 31 July 2013 as per the latest RBI circular issued today which extends the last call given by Indian banks to customers to switch to new cheque books. While the earlier deadline was 31 March 2013, the existence of many residual non CTS-2012 compliant cheques in the system might have prompted extension of the date by 4 months.
CTS-2010 Cheques
The new cheque books feature many enhanced security features to reduce fraud and have several standardized features for electronic clearing of cheques to make the whole check clearing process faster and more secure, to abide with new RBI guidelines. Remember your old cheques might not work after July 31, 2013, and any postdated cheques for home loans etc, might need new cheques to be issued.
This is how a standard CTS-2010 complaint cheque looks like
All compliant cheques will have CTS-2010 printed on the left side of each cheque leaf. If your cheque placement does not look like the one in the image above and does not have CTS-2010 printed on it, you must do new cheque book requests from your bank quickly.
Note that all new cheque books issued by Indian banks compulsorily have to be CTS-2010 compliant, so if you issued a new chequebook recently, it should be compliant. Based on the 31 March deadlines, many vendors like Ebay have already put up notices to only accept CTS-2010 cheques, so get your new cheques before they start to bounce. I just requested new cheque books from my bank online portal and got it delivered in 2 days at home. Get yours.