Philippine cheques have a distinctive shape: 203 x 76 mm, which is wide but unusually shallow. For comparison, an Indian cheque is 202 mm wide and 93 mm tall — nearly the same width, 17 mm more height.
That shallowness drives the other peculiarity. Several Philippine layouts in ChequeMaster use a single amount-in-words line, where almost every Indian and Gulf cheque uses two. There simply is not room for a second line.
Bank by bank
| Bank | Size | Date | Word lines |
|---|---|---|---|
| BDO Unibank | 203 x 76 mm | Single field | 1 |
| Bank of the Philippine Islands | 203 x 76 mm | Single field | 1 |
| Metropolitan Bank | 203 x 76 mm | Single field | 1 |
| China Banking Corporation | 203 x 76 mm | Both variants | 1 or 2 |
| Security Bank Corporation | 202 x 76 mm | Both variants | 1 |
Two banks have two layouts each
China Banking Corporation and Security Bank each have two layouts in ChequeMaster — one using a single date field, one using boxed date digits. These come from different stationery designs.
Look at your own cheque book before choosing. If the date area is one continuous line, take the single-field layout; if it is divided into small boxes, take the boxed one. Picking wrongly here is obvious immediately on a test print, and switching a cheque book's layout afterwards is a few clicks.
One word line changes how you write amounts
With only one line available, a long amount has nowhere to wrap. Two things help:
- Reduce the font size on the amount-in-words field. It is set per field, so the date and figures stay readable.
- Use the tamper-proof marks. Appending
**after the words fills the remaining space, which matters more on a single line — an unfilled tail is exactly where text can be added.
Peso settings
The Philippine peso takes two decimal places. Set the amount-in-words unit to million, not lakh — the Philippines uses the international convention, so PHP 1,250,000 reads One Million Two Hundred Fifty Thousand Pesos.
Feeding a shallow cheque
76 mm of height is the least of any layout ChequeMaster carries apart from Dubai Islamic Bank's. Set the tray guides properly and check vertical position on your first print — on a shallow cheque, a few millimetres of vertical drift puts the signature line where the amount should be.
