Three dud cheques in a year could get you banned from issuing cheques for 3 years

Featured Three dud cheques in a year could get you banned from issuing cheques for 3 years - BoG Kweku Zurek Business News Sep - 07 - 2026 , 19:32 The Bank of Ghana (BoG) has issued a warning to account holders on the consequences of issuing dud cheques, including a three-year ban from cheque issuance and a one-year ban from accessing new credit facilities for repeat offenders. According to the BoG's Financial Literacy Revised Dud Cheques Notice - 2026, a dud cheque occurs when there are insufficient funds in an account to honour the amount specified on the cheque. First-time offenders will face a penalty of 10 per cent of the cheque's face value, a warning notification from their bank, and a report to the Credit Reference Bureaus and the Bank of Ghana. For a second offence within one year, the penalty increases to 15 per cent of the face value, with additional reporting to the Credit Reference Bureaus and the Bank of Ghana. A third offence within one year carries the most severe consequences. The account holder will be charged 20 per cent of the face value, reported to the Credit Reference Bureaus and the Bank of Ghana, banned from issuing cheques for at least three years, and barred from accessing new credit facilities from the banking system for one year. The Bank of Ghana will notify all banks and Specialised Deposit-Taking Institutions of the ban. Upon receipt of notification, the account holder's bank will notify them within five working days, recall all unused cheque books and shall not issue any new cheque books until the ban is lifted. The Bank also warned that adverse reports to the Credit Reference Bureaus may tarnish an individual's creditworthiness, making access to credit difficult and expensive in the future. Account holders who fail to return unused cheque books within ten working days of notification will be reported to the Bank of Ghana, which may ban them from operating any current account and add their name to the Central Bank's Directory of High-Risk Cheque Issuers. The central bank advised account holders to keep sufficient funds in their accounts, know their account balance before issuing a cheque, consider pending transactions that may affect their balance, avoid issuing cheques based on funds expected later unless certain they will be available, keep track of all issued cheques and their expected presentation dates, and contact their bank promptly for guidance if they realise they may not have sufficient funds.