The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has allowed banks to provide direct cheque deposit facility to customers for smooth paper-based clearing operations in the wake of COVID-19.
However, banks have been asked to implement additional risk mitigating measures as per their internal policies while offering special services for smooth paper-based clearing operations to their customers. According to the SBP, to combat the potential spread of COVID-19 pandemic by limiting person-to-person interactions and to provide ease of services to customers, banks/MFBs are allowed to provide direct cheque deposit facility to customers.
Under the 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.
In this case, funds may be transferred by the paying/drawee bank either through RTGS customer fund transfer - MT102 or Over the Counter (OTC) IBFT or bank's internal online system in case both payer & payee banks are the same.
However, under direct cheque deposit facility, before debiting their customer's account, the paying/drawee bank will be required to make all necessary precautions including but not limited to customer callback or multifactor authentication to verify the authenticity/genuineness of the instrument and verification of their respective customers. Similarly, before crediting the customer account, the payee/beneficiary bank must ensure the authenticity of the customer's credentials as well.
In addition, banks have been allowed to provide doorstep cheque collection facility under which banks/MFBs may make arrangements to collect cheque from registered addresses of their customers upon their request.
Drop box cheque collection facility under which customers may drop their cheques in drop boxes of their banks, installed in select branches. As per the SBP directives, banks may allow their corporate/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.
However, such arrangement must be duly agreed with the customer under proper terms & conditions along with complete disclosure of risks and liabilities. The paying/drawee bank shall implement all necessary controls including callback confirmation or multifactor authentication to ascertain the authenticity and genuineness of the instrument and identity of the payee. Upon satisfactory validation, paying/drawee bank may transfer funds to beneficiary bank using MT 102 of RTGS (PRISM).
Further, to minimize 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.