Two new e-payment methods from mid-2025 for corporate cheque users

Deadline to cease corporate cheques pushed back by another year to end-2026

- Claire Huang

Users of cheques will have two new electronic payment methods from mid-2025 as part of Singapore's move to gradually phase out corporate cheques.

The two methods will allow deferred payments or post-dated transactions – a key feature of cheques. A post-dated cheque is one that is written with a future date indicated on it and used by businesses in payments.

Individuals and companies can use the upcoming electronic deferred payment system EDP and EDP+ via the digital banking platforms of seven banks. They are DBS Bank, OCBC Bank, UOB, Citibank, HSBC, Maybank and Standard Chartered Bank.

To allow organisations enough time to switch to the new e-payment methods, the deadline to stop processing corporate cheques will be pushed back by another year to the end of December 2026, the Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS) and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said on Dec 5.

But there will be no change to the deadline for banks to stop issuing new cheque books to companies by the end of December 2025.

Corporate cheque payees should therefore present their cheques for clearing well before Dec 31, 2026, to ensure that their cheques can be processed before the deadline, said MAS and ABS.