Cheques how long valid

Government Printing Office. Accessed Jan. Treasury, Bureau of the Fiscal Service. American Express. United States Postal Service.

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It should be understood that the cheque will not be simply rejected and the cheque can be cancelled only when the person who has written it requests to stop the transaction. How to Spot a Fake Cheque? The 6 main ways to spot if a cheque is fake Do cheques expire? If yes, when do cheques expire? In the end, even if banks are only legitimately needed to honor cheque validity for 6 months, you should make it a point to deposit checks as you receive them, so as to avoid any possible issues.

It is because the cheque expiry date is not in 6 months but actually the cheque expiry date is still 6 years. Ultimately you can refer a dispute to the Financial Ombudsman Service. The vast majority of cheques are paid and do not bounce. Only around 0. The typical reason for a bank to bounce a cheque is because a customer does not have enough money in their account to pay the cheque or they have used all of their overdraft facility.

In addition, when a bank spots a fraudulent cheque it will bounce it. But banks also bounce cheques because: the cheques have not been signed correctly e. A cheque is valid for as long as the debt between the two parties i.

However, it is common banking practice to reject cheques that are over six months old to protect the person who has written the cheque, in case the payment has been made another way or the cheque has been lost or stolen. This six-month timeframe is at the discretion of individual banks. It should not be assumed that cheques older than six months would automatically be rejected as the only definite way to cancel a cheque is for the person who wrote it to request that a stop be placed on it.

If you have a cheque that you want to pay in that is more than six months old, your best course of action is to not pay it in and instead obtain a replacement from the person who gave it to you.

Where there is a dispute, a cheque remains legally valid in order to provide proof of the existence of a debt for a period of six years, which is the Statute of Limitations.