Philippine banks will no longer accept checks with the old design starting May 1, 2024, the Philippine Clearing House Corp. (PCHC) said.
The move implements a new standardized format for checks, PCHC President Emmanuel Barcena said in a TeleRadyo Serbisyo interview.
Barcena said the implementation of the new check design was deferred from May 2, 2023, to May 1, 2024, to allow bank customers to use up their remaining checks.
Under the old design, there was no standard format for dates on checks. Some checks had dates written out in words, while others used month-date-year or date-month-year formats.
The new standard format uses boxes to indicate the date in numeric format: month, day, and year. This follows the standard used for Philippine passports.
The peso sign was also moved outside the box designated for the amount written in figures.
The PCHC said any non-compliant checks, beyond those meeting specific exceptions, would be rejected during clearing.
These rejected checks will be returned by the drawee bank to the presenting banks with the reason: “Refer to Issuer: Old Format Check.”
Barcena said that optical character recognition technology allows machines to capture all necessary data on bank checks.
He advised checkbook owners with the old format to obtain replacements with the new design. Old-format checks can only be used through over-the-counter transactions with the issuing bank and will not be accepted through the clearing house system, he said.