The Substance of Electronic Clearing Checks

Abstract

Electronic clearing checks has not established as a legal system with its own roots and origins, but it is a banking system created by the need to be used as a mean to settle commercial payment safely and quickly, and till this moment no it is not subject to a full legislative regulation, so it is still subject to a set of norms and customs applied by banks.

On the other hand, the Syrian Commercial Law has not included any rules related separately to the banking clearing checks, therefore, it is necessary to refer to the provisions of the Syrian civil law “in a way that does not incompatible with the principles of commercial work” which established general provisions for clearing, and did not address the clearing of banking operations, which prompted the Central Bank of Syria to establish rules that regulate the banking process for clearing checks.

According to the fact that the electronic clearing of checks will determine the financial status of the participating banks and create legal relations among all parties, therefore, it is necessary to find a clear definition of electronic clearing as a new banking system, in preparation for addressing the electronic clearing of checks as one of the operations implemented on the electronic clearing system, and to distinguish it from electronic bank transfers to remove the ambiguity of all these operations and terms, and to adapt these relations on clear legal bases that clarify the rights and duties of all parties and the obligations on them.

Activating checks electronic clearing in Syria would collides with number of obstacles, one of these obstacles is the old legislatives and laws which do not consider the technical development in the electronic banking domain, in addition to the operational obstacles that the Central Bank of Syria faces, which required series modifications on the Syrian commercial law in correspondent with the electronic transaction law, and creating an effective IT system in order to accelerate the activation of the electronic clearing system.