Eurocheque

The Eurocheque was a type of cheque used in Europe that was accepted across national borders and which could be written in a variety of currencies.

Eurocheques were introduced in 1969 as an alternative to the traveller's cheque and for international payments for goods and services. They were rapidly adopted for domestic use in a number of countries, to the extent that their use for international payment rarely accounted for more than 5% of total Eurocheque transactions.^[1] The charges for clearing Eurocheques were substantially lower than those for cross-border use of domestic cheques.^[2]

Although still accepted as payment by a few bodies, the practice of issuing Eurocheques ceased on 1 January 2002, following the decision to withdraw the Eurocheque guarantee.^[3]

Eurocheques were particularly popular in German-speaking countries, where they were often issued as standard domestic cheques. They usually had to be accompanied by a cheque guarantee card in order to be accepted in payment at a point of sale. The Eurocheque guarantee card also had the functionality of an ATM card. In some countries, such as Austria and Germany, virtually all Eurocheque cards were co-branded with the logo of the respective domestic debit card system and were actually debit cards. After its phase-out, virtually all of these Eurocheque cards were replaced by Maestro cards. Therefore, Maestro is very often considered to be the successor to the Eurocheque system.

The decision to end the issuing of Eurocheques was taken because increasing numbers of retailers and banks started to decline payment by Eurocheque and because the use of cash machines and credit cards by international travellers grew within Europe.^[4] The relatively high cost of processing Eurocheques, together with the costs resulting from fraud, were also among the factors.^[1] In advance of the move, the European Commission expressed concern that "the benefits of the existing eurocheque system, in particular its standardised cheque format and its clearing facilities in all European countries should not be lost."^[2]