SBP cuts cheque clearing time to three minutes

The State Bank of Pakistan has announced measures to limit person-toperson interaction of customers whilst continuing to facilitate banking during the COVID-19 impact.

These measures work to ease banking for all, customers and bankers alike. The measures announced by the State Bank in a letter to all CEOs,Presidents and Clearing Houses allowed Banks/MFBs to provide alternate services to customers to facilitate banking.

Direct Cheque Deposit Facility A crossed cheque may be presented by payee/beneficiary directly into the paying/drawee bank, instead of their bank branches as per the existing practice.

Doorstep Cheque Collection Facility Banks/MFBs may make arrangements to collect cheque from registered addresses of their customers upon their request.

Drop box Cheque Collection Facility Customers may drop their cheques in drop boxes of their Banks, installed in selected branches.

Banks may allow their Corporates/Priority customers to send them the scanned image of the cheque along with relevant details of the Beneficiary either through registered emails or through mobile Apps of their banks to push funds from their accounts to the payee bank.

Further, to minimise person-to-person interaction, Banks/MFBs may also make arrangements with the Clearing House (NIFT) for clearing their cheques through Image Based Clearing (IBC) functionality as per the agreed SOPs between NIFT and banks.

Meanwhile, the general public has demanded of the concerned authorities to take strict measures to check all the medical stores and force its owners to hire qualified, responsible and sensible staff for dealing with masses especially amid corona virus outbreak scenario as they were dealing directly with the human life.

According to a report aired on a TV channel, it said although, there is an acute dearth of skilled workers in every sphere of life unfortunately, the health related facilities were of no exception.