About Us

The Cheque and Credit Clearing Company is a membership-based industry body which manages the cheque clearing system in Great Britain. The system is also used to process bankers' drafts, building society cheques, postal orders, warrants and government payable orders. The company also manages the systems for clearing paper bank giro credits and euro cheques.

The role of the company is to:

• provide and run the exchange centres where the members exchange their cheques and paper credits;
• provide the Inter-Bank Date Exchange (IBDE) network across which the banks transmit electronic details about the cheques;
• calculate the net amounts members must settle with each other based on the value of the cheques and credits exchanged and advise the amounts to the settlement service provider;
• determine the rules required to maintain the integrity of the clearing systems to ensure that the central clearing process happens on time, reliably and to quality standards;
• ensure that participating members comply with the scheme rules.

The company establishes the criteria for membership of the clearing systems; these criteria must be objective, fair and open.

The company also manages the Cheque Printers Accreditation Scheme (CPAS). This scheme was introduced in 1995 with the aim of tackling fraud involving company cheques. The scheme ensures that all cheques for use in the GB clearing are produced by accredited printers who have adopted stringent security standards.

The clearing of cheque and credit payments in Northern Ireland is managed by the Belfast Bankers Clearing Committee.