News: UK Clarifies Cheque Clearance Times

This is good news for residents of the UK who have been targeted by cheque forgery scams, which account for a fair slab of the job scams I report at Suckers Wanted. Banks have been quite clear about how soon after depositing a cheque you can draw on it, but they have been rather less clear about how long it takes to fully process the cheque. There is a window in which you can withdraw the funds, but the cheque can still bounce, and this is the window that scammers exploit. Although the window has not been eliminated, new rules make the window small and uniform across banks. If you receive a cheque in the UK and you don't fully trust the source (which you should not, unless you have significant prior experience with it), you should wait seven working days before you act on the payment. If the cheque hasn't bounced in that time, it's the bank's problem for not detecting the issue quickly enough.

These rules come into effect on the first of December.