Central bank close to automated clearing system

April 12, 2018 in Finance, Financial Services, Policy by Editor

April 12, 2018—Bank of Uganda (BoU) will on April 20th 2018 set in motion the new automated clearing system. According to officials, the system will provide a fully automated clearing house with a truncation capability meaning no more need for the back and forth movement of physical cheques.

Cheque truncation involves exchanging electronic cheque images in the clearing system. “The entire country will have access to a single centralised cheque clearing platforms as opposed to the current decentralised and unaligned platforms,” Prof. Emmanuel Tumusiime Mutebile, the BoU Governor said in a statement Thursday.

However the public can continue using the old system or seek information from their banks about how to use the new system.

Cheques presented for payment will be scanned by the collecting banks and the resulting high definition images, together with relevant electronic data, will be transmitted electronically to the paying banks through the clearing house.

According to Mutebile, the new system will have a number of advantages including a reduction in the cost of cheque clearing and less fraud.