The consumer protection law in BC speaks to how much can be charged for cashing specific types of government cheques. This fee cap applies to any business who cashes these cheques, including payday lenders.
The most that can be charged to cash these cheques is either $2.00 plus 1% of the cheque amount or $10 – whichever is less. This means it should never cost more than $10 to cash these cheques.
These laws only apply to BC Employment and Assistance cheques issued by the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction. The Ministry only issues two kinds of cheques: the face of the cheque will indicate “BC Employment and Assistance” or “BC Employment and Assistance Imprest Account”.
The fee cap does not apply to manually printed cheques. These cheques are only issued in extreme circumstances. The payment details and signatures on these cheques are filled out in handwriting.
BC Employment and Assistance Imprest (on demand) cheques only:
The Imprest cheque stock that is currently used by the BC Government is changing and will be rolled out in a phased implementation (June – November 2019) across the province.
BC Employment and Assistance Imprest Account cheques (old and new) are printed on a blue and orange background.
There will be a period of time where the Imprest cheques printed on the old and new cheque stock will be in circulation at the same time. Cheque cashers need to know that cheques printed on the old and new cheque stock will be valid for cashing (so long as the date on the cheque is six months or less) and that both of these types of cheques should have the government cheque cashing fee cap applied to them.
If you have a specific reason to be concerned about the validity of a BC Employment & Assistance or Imprest Account cheque, call 1.877.815.2363 (Option Zero).
