16 February: Cheques

On this date in 1659 the first British cheque (£400) was written by Nicholas Vanacker and is now in the archives of the National Westminster Bank. 10 facts about cheques.

1. While cheques might not have been used in Britain until 1659, there is evidence that requests to pay money to specific people were being used in India in 321 BC and that they were also used in Ancient Rome and Persia, where they referred to them as čak or sakk.
2. The Americans spell it "check" rather than "cheque", which was, in fact, they way everyone spelled the word at first. It was thought to originate from "a check against forgery". The Commonwealth and Ireland used the "cheque" spelling from 1828 when James William Gilbart started using it in his Practical Treatise on Banking, possibly to distinguish it from other usages of the word.
3. It was 1717 before the Bank of England began issuing pre-printed forms, on special paper to discourage forgery.
4. Can you actually pay those oversized ones people pose with when they've won the Lottery or on charity fundraising shows? Yes, but the bank might charge extra for doing it.
5. The largest cheque ever, according to Guinness World Records, measured 12 x 25 metres (39 x 82 feet).
6. There is such a thing as a left-handed cheque book.
7. A person who writes a cheque is called the drawer. The person or entity which is to receive the money is called the payee, and the bank the money is to come out of is the drawee.
8. The days of the cheque are almost certainly numbered thanks to debit cards, electronic transactions and online banking. Banks prefer these non-paper based methods and encourage their customers to use those instead. Many UK shops will no longer accept them.
9. If there is insufficient money in a drawer's account to honour a cheque that they've written, the cheque is said to have "bounced", or is a "rubber cheque". The drawer will be penalised by their bank when this happens. It's also possible for a drawer to stop a cheque and tell the bank not to pay out, say if the payee loses the cheque and there's a chance someone else will find it and try to cash it.
10. The band Oasis once promised a full refund for a cancelled show, but regretted it when they realised just how much it would cost them. Their solution was to issue cheques, signed by the band, in the hope that people would keep them as autographs rather than cash them.

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