Suggestion to Banks with online banking facility - HDFC, ICICI and others

I have sent the below mail to one of the banks and wanted to reproduce it in a public forum for the benefit of other banks.

Sub: Suggestion regarding cheque transaction management.

With the rise in usage of cash withdrawal from ATMs and payments/fund transfers through Internet Banking, customers (at least the salaried class and those who are well versed with online banking) are using cheques sparingly. But then these customers are the most prone to not doing the diligent part of cheque payments, which is maintaining the required amount till the time the cheque gets cleared.

I have a suggestion to your Bank to add value to its online internet banking service by helping customers overcome such issue and all the associated (Cheque returned for lack of funds, penalties thereof and reputation risk and the inconvenience in correcting the error) problems.

All the bank has to do is add a new service in the online banking service that can be called "cheque management." This service should work like this:

1. Whenever a customer issues a cheque, he/she can login to the online banking account and click on the cheque management service.
2. Fill the details of the cheque issued - name of the party, cheque number, amount to be paid etc.
3. Then click on the block cheque amount. After confirmation the said amount will get blocked from the customer's account and he/she will not be able to withdraw that amount from any means and the blocked amount will be used only for payment of the cheque indicated
4. In case there is any change in the cheque payment transaction, customer should be able to unblock the amount and do the necessary.

This should be only a voluntary, customer request based service and the Bank should not have any liability of any mistakes in amount blocked.

The information fed in the online account can be used to cross verify the cheque presented and can be used to avoid frauds too.

I would be delighted if the merits of this suggestion is discussed and implemented in a suitable manner. In case any further details are required, feel free to call me (your customer care has my number - hehehe)

Thanks and Regards
Kiran Kumar A