Cheques of ₹50,000+ need an alphanumeric code? What Bank of India actually said (2026)

Picture a steel cupboard in a landlord's house. Inside, a folder of post-dated rent cheques, ₹60,000 each, running well into next year, all signed by a tenant who banks with Bank of India. Nobody has done anything wrong. The tenant has paid on time for three years. And yet some of those leaves may come back unpaid from January, and neither of them has any idea. (The landlord is invented. The cheques in cupboards like his are not.)

This comes from a notice Bank of India posted on X on 17 August 2026. Within days it had been rewritten by half the internet as "old cheques will no longer be valid". That is not what it says. What it does say is narrower, and for anyone it touches, more urgent than the headlines suggest, because the real problem is the cheques you have already handed over.

This post sets out what we could confirm as of 2 November 2026, what we could not, and what to do with a cheque book on your desk today.

What the notice actually says

The wording, from Bank of India's own advisory: "cheques of ₹50,000 and above without an alphanumeric code will not be honoured after 31.12.2026". Customers are told to apply for a new cheque book.

Read it slowly and four things come out of it. It is one bank's notice. It has an amount, ₹50,000 and above. It has a test, whether the leaf carries an alphanumeric code. And it has a date, 31 December 2026.

It does not say all old cheques die. A leaf that already carries the code is outside it. A cheque below ₹50,000 is outside its wording, though see the warning further down before you build a plan on that.

Around 22 August, media reports derived from Mint and NDTV widened the story to "several public and private sector banks" or "some banks". None of the coverage we read names a second bank. So the honest position is this: one named bank, one confirmed notice, and a vague plural that nobody has backed with a name.

What has not been published

Three gaps, and they matter more than the notice itself.

• No RBI or NPCI circular. We searched and found none, as of 2 November 2026. That cuts both ways. We cannot tell you this is an RBI rule, and we cannot tell you it isn't connected to something RBI or NPCI asked for. A few sites word it as if RBI ordered it, without pointing to a circular. Treat it as what it provably is, a bank notice, which binds you in practice anyway: your bank decides whether your cheque gets paid.
• No description of the code. The sources do not say where the code sits on the leaf, how long it is, or what it looks like. Any article telling you "look at the top right corner" is guessing, and so would we be, so we won't.
• No detail on edge cases. Does the date on the cheque count, or the day it reaches the bank? What happens to a code-less cheque for ₹49,000? The notice doesn't go there.

What we can say is what the code isn't. IFSC is not it. Your account number is not it. MICR is not it. The cheque number in the top-left corner is a plain numeric serial, so that isn't it either. People will squint at a leaf, spot a string of letters and digits, usually the IFSC, and conclude they're safe. That is the single most likely mistake here.

The notice tells you what will happen to the cheque. It does not tell you what the code looks like. On that question, the only answer worth having comes from your own branch, looking at your own leaf.

Headline vs what we could confirm

A word on the ₹50,000 figure

That number will look familiar. Bank of India has offered Positive Pay on CTS cheques of ₹50,000 and above since 1 January 2021, and it is natural to assume the two are linked. Nothing we read says so. Positive Pay is a separate control: you give the bank a cheque's details in advance, and they are checked at clearing. Registering a cheque under Positive Pay is not a substitute for the code, and nothing suggests it rescues a leaf without one.

Nor is this a change to the CTS-2010 standard, as far as we can find. A leaf can meet CTS-2010 and still be caught by this notice, because the notice asks about the code, not about CTS. If your leaf has the "CTS-2010" mark, that tells you nothing either way.

Check your leaf in five steps

This takes a short branch visit, and you only need to do it once per cheque book.

1. Step 1 — gather an unused leaf from every book. Every account, every book in the drawer, including the spare in the accounts cupboard. Two books from the same account can be from different print runs, so don't assume one speaks for the other.
2. Step 2 — rule out the numbers you already know. IFSC, account number, MICR and cheque number are not the code. Crossing them off stops you from reassuring yourself by mistake.
3. Step 3 — show the leaf to your branch. Take it in, or use the bank's official customer care. Never a number from a forwarded message, and never send a photo of a leaf to anyone claiming to help. Ask three things: does this leaf carry the required code, does the rule apply to cheques presented after 31 December whatever their date, and what happens to unused leaves.
4. Step 4 — apply for a new book if told to. Branch, net banking or app, whichever your bank offers; the online cheque book request guide covers the usual routes. Do it now. Allow for delivery, and for the signatory who needs to collect it being away.
5. Step 5 — list every cheque of ₹50,000 or more that is still outstanding. Include post-dated ones, deposits and security cheques. A proper cheque issue register makes this a ten-minute filter. Without one, you're going through counterfoils.

One thing not to do: don't write or print anything onto an old leaf to supply a "code". The notice's remedy is a new book from the bank, and an altered leaf is its own problem.

Which date counts

The notice says such cheques will not be "honoured after 31.12.2026". Our reading, and it is only a reading, is that what counts is when the bank is asked to pay, not the date written on the leaf. If that's right, a code-less ₹80,000 cheque dated 20 December and deposited on 5 January is on the wrong side of the line, even though it was perfectly in date.

And it could easily happen, since a cheque stays valid for three months from the date on it. A leaf dated late December can legally sit in a supplier's bag until March. So from now on, assume any code-less leaf of ₹50,000 or more might be deposited after the deadline, and either confirm with your bank or don't issue it.

The cheques already out of your hands

This is where it gets expensive. Your own cheque book is easy to fix. The leaves sitting with other people are not.

Post-dated cheques are the obvious case. Landlords hold them for rent, lenders for instalments, suppliers for staged payments, and some will carry dates into 2027. If a leaf of ₹50,000 or more has no code, it should be replaced before the payee deposits it, not after it comes back.

The ordering matters. Tell the payee early. Hand over the new cheque and take back the old leaf in the same meeting, then mark the old one cancelled in your records. If the old leaf cannot be retrieved, talk to your bank before doing anything else, because you don't want two live cheques for one debt.

If you borrowed against those cheques, don't treat this as a bank formality. A dishonoured instalment with no replacement in place may simply count as unpaid under your agreement, with whatever follows from that. And if you're holding cheques from someone else, a tenant, customer or borrower who banks with Bank of India, you have a stake too. Ask them. Your own bank doesn't matter here; the leaf belongs to theirs.

This post is general information, not legal advice. If a large dishonoured cheque or a loan default is already in play, speak to a lawyer rather than relying on a blog.

If you bank somewhere else

The notice names Bank of India customers. Given the "some banks" reports, it is still worth one question at your own branch or through official customer care: is any such requirement planned for our cheques? Asking costs nothing, and a written answer from your bank beats anything you read online, this page included.

While a new book is on its way and a payment is due, remember that a cheque isn't the only way to pay. NEFT, RTGS or UPI will settle most business payments without any code at all, and for a one-off payment they may simply be the better answer.

The ₹50,000 line also tempts people into splitting a payment into smaller cheques on old leaves. Don't design your payments around a rule whose edges nobody has published.

When the new book arrives

A new cheque book can mean a new series, and a new series can mean fields have moved. Banks don't announce a shift of a few millimetres. So before anyone runs a batch on it, print a plain-paper test, hold it over a real leaf against a window, and check the date, payee, amount and signature zones. The format and alignment guide walks through it field by field.

This applies whether you print from online cheque printing software, your accounting package or a spreadsheet template. To be clear about what software can't do: Cheqify doesn't know your bank's code and can't add one. That comes with the leaf, from your bank. Software only handles what goes in the fields.

And then file the old book properly. Don't bin the remaining leaves. Ask the branch whether it wants them back; if not, mark them cancelled, record them in your register, and destroy them.

Back in that steel cupboard, the fix is one conversation between a landlord and a tenant and a fresh set of leaves. It only gets difficult if the conversation happens in January.

New cheque book on the way? Test it before the payment run. Cheqify comes with 300+ Indian bank layouts pre-built, writes the amount in words automatically, and tracks every leaf from issue to clearance, so the list of what's still outstanding is already there when you need it. The bank's code stays with your bank; the printing doesn't have to be a headache. 100% free. Start at app.cheqify.app.