Can you cash a big novelty cheque?

We’re all familiar with giant cheques as a comedy or presentation device. Nothing makes for a better photo op at the end of a fundraising campaign or after a generous donation. But can you actually cash a big novelty cheque? Let’s find out...

What constitutes a cheque?

According to The Bills of Exchange Act 1882, a cheque is a written order instructing their bank to pay a specified amount of cash to the person written on the document. Consequently, by that definition the idea of a cheque as a formal structured and standardised document is up for debate. In theory, you could create a ‘written order instructing your bank to pay a specified amount of cash’ to someone on a post-it, and it would still be considered a cheque.  

However, the cheque itself is a request, not an instruction and not an acceptance or acknowledgement of said request. So whereas you could certainly legally submit a post-it to your local bank, they may not honor it! 

The CPAS (Cheque Printer Accreditation Scheme (CPAS) was set up in 1995 and requires that all cheques intentend for clearing are produced by C&CCC (Cheque and Credit Clearing Company) accredited printers . This scheme was meant to limit the amount of fraud and keep customers safe. It does however state that ‘Paper items where a codeline is not present are exchanged as ‘non-standard paper’ and require significant manual effort to process’ so… as a non-standard size, we can imagine they won’t be thrilled to receive your giant cheque and may refuse it, citing additional processing time! 

So can you cash a big novelty cheque?

By the above definition of a cheque, which assumedly now accepts ‘written’ to also mean ‘typed’, you could indeed submit a big novelty cheque to a bank and hope it would be cashed.  

However, most banks do have a large amount of small print, some of which states that non-conventional cheque deposits have the right to be refused… we’d probably consider a big novelty cheque somewhat ‘unconventional!’ And, with the rise of digitised cheque deposits (you may drop your cheque into an ATM, instead of dealing with a teller), the process of cashing a big novelty cheque becomes somewhat harder… you certainly couldn’t fit a large scale novelty cheque into an ATM slot, or indeed through the bank teller’s window…

As ‘Non-standard paper’ requires ‘significant manual effort to process’ we can’t imagine a clerk at Nationwide would be thrilled if you rocked up with a big novelty cheque to cash!

 Don’t despair though! Most big novelty cheques are for the presentation only, and most donors will offer conventional-sized cheques to cash at the bank. 

If you need any assistance ordering or designing your giant novelty cheque, don’t hesitate to get in touch today.