Dishonoured cheque
cheque that a bank declines to pay
A dishonoured cheque (US spelling: dishonored check) is a cheque that the bank on which it is drawn declines to pay ("honour"). There are a number of reasons why a bank might refuse to honour a cheque, with non-sufficient funds (NSF) being the most common, indicating that there are insufficient cleared funds in the account on which the cheque was drawn. An NSF cheque may be referred to as a bad cheque, dishonoured cheque, bounced cheque, cold cheque, rubber cheque, returned item, or hot cheque. Lost or bounced cheques result in late payments and affect the relationship with customers. In England and Wales and Australia, such cheques are typically returned endorsed "Refer to drawer", an instruction to contact the person issuing the cheque for an explanation as to why it was not paid. If there are funds in an account, but insufficient cleared funds, the cheque is normally endorsed "Present again", by which time the funds should have cleared.
When more than one cheque is presented for payment on the same day, and the payment of both would result in the account becoming overdrawn (or below some approved credit limit), the bank has a discretion as to which cheque to pay and which to dishonour. A bank has a general discretion whether or not to honour a cheque that will result in an account becoming overdrawn, but a payment on one occasion does not bind the bank to do so again on another occasion. A bank cannot partially pay on a cheque, so that it must either pay a cheque in full or dishonour it. If a bank declines to pay a cheque, it must promptly return the cheque to the person who deposited it or presented it to be cashed.
The public source identifies “Dishonoured cheque” as cheque that a bank declines to pay. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Dishonoured, cheque and bank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dishonoured cheque” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.