Echeques: ICICI Bank shows the way

Font Size

Print

Feedback

Email

Discuss

In 2002, ‘e’ is for an echeque. An electronic cheque. A cheque that never expires. A cheque that never bounces whether because of insufficient balance in the account or a faulty ignature. A cheque the creditor doesn’t have to present physically at his bank.

A cheque that enables outstation payments to be credited to the payee’s account within 2-3 days flat. A cheque that transfers money at half the cost of a demand draft!

Echeques are already operational in the US, Australia has put them on trial since November 2001 and now they are here in India—thanks to ICICI Bank Ltd.

However, only registered users of ICICI Bank’s Infinity Internet Banking can avail of the echeque facility. So, first you open an account with ICICI Bank’s Internet Banking and then put in your request for an echeque book, which has been on offer since January 11, 2002. The registration (one-time) and the request attract no additional fees or charges.

“We have developed the software for this service inhouse and are offering the facility using the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) service,” boasts Chanda Kochhar, executive director, ICICI Bank Ltd.

Customers who opt for the echeque facility can send money from their ICICI Bank account anywhere in the country to any bank across eight cities—Mumbai, New Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Nagpur to start with, says Ms Kochhar. The facility will be extended to other smaller cities such as Kanpur, Jaipur, Bhubaneswar, Patna, Guwahati, Thiruvananthapuram and Chandigarh within the next six months.

“For the first three months (till April 2002), we are offering an introductory zero cost to customers for sending an echeque,” explains Ms Kochhar. Even after that period, “the commission on writing our echeques—at the rate of Re 1 per Rs 1,000—is much lower, at least 50 per cent, than the commission rates other banks charge for making a demand draft for an equivalent amount,” she explains.

Not only are echeques more cost-effective than demand drafts when sending money to an outstation destination, they are also more time-efficient—the money gets credited to the payee’s account within two days.