. . . security features and design upgraded
Ntsebeng Motsoeli
THE Central Bank of Lesotho (CBL) will today hold a workshop for the business community and the general public to inform them of a new and quicker cheque clearance system to be implemented by the local banks.
CBL Public Relations Officer, Moroke Moroke, said the workshop will also introduce the new cheques with upgraded security features and design.
“Business people are going to be informed of the new system; how it is going to work and how the cheques clearing period will be reduced from the current seven days to two,” Mr Moroke said.
Last week CBL governor, Retšelisitsoe Matlanyane, said the current cheques were valid and could still be processed until 31 August. The deadline for presentation of such cheques, however, was 25 August.
She said the new system will also eliminate the requirements of a physical paper for purposes of clearance.
Dr Matlanyane said that individuals and business people who printed their own cheques would obtain the new cheque books from their respective banks as soon as they are available.
The new cheques, which will be smaller in size, will be scanned in a specialised machine that can immediately pick up when a cheque is fraudulent.
To ensure the visibility of the details of the new cheques, Dr Matlanyane urged the use of black or blue ink pens to sign.
“A black pen is highly recommended. The public is reminded that value of the cheque should not exceed M100 000.
The public is further cautioned not to redeposit a returned cheque, deposit a post-dated or stale cheque or to fold cheques as this may impact on the readability of the Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR) code line,” she said.
The initiative which is aimed at reducing the clearing cycle of cheque payments, to eliminate fraud and improve security features, is expected to go live on 9 August.
