Cheque and Credit Clearing Company
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| Industry | Financial services |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1985 |
| Headquarters | London, United Kingdom |
The Cheque and Credit Clearing Company Limited is a UK membership-based industry body whose 12 members are the UK clearing banks. The company has managed the cheque clearing system in England and Wales since 1985, and in all of Great Britain since 1996 when it took over responsibility for managing the Scottish cheque clearing as well.
As well as clearing cheques, the system processes the following forms of payment: banker's drafts, building society cheques, postal orders, warrants, government payable orders and traveler's cheques. The company also manages the systems for the clearing of paper bank giro credits (the credit clearing) and euro cheques (the euro clearing).
The clearing system in Northern Ireland is operated by the Belfast Bankers' Clearing Company for the four clearing banks there.
In 2009 three and a half million cheques and three hundred thousand paper credits passed through the British interbank clearing system each working day. Cheque volumes reached a peak in 1990 when 4 billion cheques were written but usage has fallen since then. This is mainly due to alternative methods of payment such as direct debits, BACS payments and more recently, the Faster Payments Service, being used more widely by both individuals and businesses. The annual rate of decline of the volume of cheques being used is now in double figures.
Members of the Cheque and Credit Clearing Company are individually responsible for processing cheques drawn by, or credited to, the accounts of their customers. In addition, several hundred other institutions provide cheque facilities for their customers and obtain indirect access to the cheque clearing mechanisms by means of commercially negotiated agency arrangements with one of the full members.
The Cheque and Credit Clearing Company members, known as clearing banks are:
From the end of November 2007, changes known as 2-4-6 came into force. These have increased clarity and certainty when paying in cheques to a bank or building society account.
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