The Bank of Ghana (BoG) has introduced tougher consequences for customers who repeatedly issue dud cheques, with persistent offenders facing restrictions on cheque use, new credit facilities and, in severe cases, current-account operations.
Under the revised rules, customers who issue cheques without sufficient funds will face progressively higher penalties, beginning with a fine of 10% of the cheque’s value for a first offence.
A dud cheque is one issued against an account that does not have enough funds to cover the amount stated on the cheque. The bank is required to return such a cheque unpaid, while the customer could also face legal action.
For a first offence, the customer’s bank must impose a penalty equivalent to 10% of the face value of the cheque and issue a warning explaining the consequences of another breach.
The incident must also be reported to the Bank of Ghana and the relevant Credit Reference Bureaus (CRBs), potentially creating an adverse record that could affect the customer’s future borrowing.
The financial consequences become steeper when the offence is repeated. A second dud cheque issued within one year of the first attracts a penalty of 15% of the cheque’s value, alongside another warning and mandatory reporting to the central bank and credit reference bureaus.
A third offence within the same one-year period attracts a penalty of 20% of the cheque’s face value and triggers more severe restrictions.
At that stage, the Bank of Ghana will ban the customer from issuing cheques for a minimum of three years and restrict access to new credit facilities from the banking system for one year.
The central bank will also inform banks and Specialised Deposit-Taking Institutions about the sanction, effectively alerting financial institutions to the customer’s status.
BoG has warned that repeated dud-cheque offences could have longer-term implications for a customer’s financial standing. Adverse information submitted to credit reference bureaus may lower creditworthiness, making future borrowing more difficult, more expensive or less accessible.
The restrictions also extend to cheque books. Once a bank receives notification of a cheque-issuing ban, it must inform the affected customer within five working days, recall all unused cheque books and stop issuing new ones until the sanction is lifted.
Customers have 10 working days to return unused cheque books after receiving notification. Failure to comply could result in further action by the Bank of Ghana.
In such cases, the bank must report the matter to the central bank, which may prohibit the customer from operating any current account and place their name on the Bank of Ghana’s Directory of High-Risk Cheque Issuers.
The central bank is therefore urging customers to exercise greater caution before issuing cheques, particularly by checking their available account balances and taking into account pending transactions that could reduce the funds available.
BoG is also cautioning customers against issuing cheques based on money they expect to receive later unless they are certain the funds will be available when the cheque is presented.
Customers have further been encouraged to maintain proper records of cheques they issue, including their expected presentation dates, and contact their banks promptly if they anticipate that their accounts may not have sufficient funds.
The revised regime effectively shifts the consequences of issuing dud cheques from a one-off financial penalty to a progressively stricter system that can affect a customer’s access to banking and credit services.
