Cheques

A cheque is a payment instrument enabling the movement of the funds held by the owner of a deposit account with a credit institution. The supply of cheques is a contract between a bank and its customer (cheque convention). Thus, credit institutions are not obliged to supply cheque books to their customers.
 
In turn, a cheque is not legal tender, i.e. there is no legal obligation to accept a cheque in payment for goods or services.
 
The misuse of cheques, namely the issue of bad cheques, may give rise to the termination of a cheque convention and to a registration in the List of Cheque Defaulters (list of issuers of bad cheques). This information is recorded in a data base managed by Banco de Portugal and is based on data reported by the credit institutions.