A cheque (or check in American English) is a document/instrument (usually a piece of paper[nb

1]
) that orders a payment of money. The person writing the cheque, the drawer, usually has a
chequing account where their money was previously deposited. The drawer writes the various
details including the money amount, date, and a payee on the cheque, and signs it, ordering their
bank, known as the drawee, to pay this person or company the amount of money stated.

Cheques are a type of bill of exchange and were developed as a way to make payments without
the need to carry around large amounts of gold and silver. Paper money also evolved from bills
of exchange, and are similar to cheques in that they are a written order to pay the given amount
to whomever had it in their possession (the "bearer").

Technically, a cheque is a negotiable instrument[nb 2] instructing a financial institution to pay a

specific amount of a specific currency from a specified transactional account held in the drawer's
name with that institution. Both the drawer and payee may be natural persons or legal entities.
Specifically, cheques are order instruments, and are not in general payable simply to the bearer
(as bearer instruments are) but must be paid to the payee. In some countries, such as the US, the
payee must endorse the cheque first, giving them the possibility to specifying a third party to
whom it should be paid.

Although cheques have been around since at least the 9th century, it was during the 20th century
that cheques became a highly popular non-cash method for making payments and the usage of
cheques peaked. By the second half of the 20th century, as cheque processing became
automated, billions of cheques were issued each year with volumes peaking in or around the
early 1990s.[1] Since that time cheque usage has seen significant decline as electronic payment
systems started to replace physical cheques. In a number of countries cheques have become a
marginal payment system or have been phased out completely.