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The Eurocheque was a type of cheque used in Europe. It was accepted across national borders and 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 services and goods. They were rapidly adopted for domestic use in several countries, to the extent that their use for international payment rarely accounted for more than five percentages of total Eurocheque transactions. The charges for clearing Eurocheques were lower than those for cross-border use domestic cheques.
Although still accepted as payment, the practice of issuing Eurocheques ceased on 1 Jan 2002. It was followed the decision to withdraw the Eurocheque guarantee. This was the same date that the EURO was introduced.
Eurocheque was particularly popular in Germanic countries, where they were often issued as standard domestic cheques. They usually had to be accompanied by cheque guarantee card in order to be accepted in payment at a POS (point of sales). The Eurocheque guarantee card also had the similar functionality of an ATM card. In some countries virtually all Eurocheque cards were actually debit cards. After its phase-out, all of these Eurocheque cards were replaced by (Cirrus) Maestro cards. Maestro is considered to be the successor to the Eurocheque system.
The decision to end the issuing of these cheques was taken as increasing numbers of retailers. Banks took up declining payment by Eurocheque, but the use of ATMs and credit cards by travellers increased slightly in Europe. The higher cost of processing Eurocheques, together with the fraud costs, were also one of the factors. 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 shouldn't be lost.
Source: Wikipedia: Eurocheque
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