Cheque is the British, Canadian, Australian, Indian and wider Commonwealth spelling of check, the written, signed order that tells a bank to pay a stated amount from the writer's account to a named payee or to the bearer. The instrument and the accounting treatment are identical whichever spelling is used.
Spelling and usage
American English settled on "check" in the nineteenth century, while British English kept "cheque" for the payment instrument and reserved "check" for the verb meaning to verify. Most international banking texts, and the laws of the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth countries, use "cheque". Related terms follow the same split: a chequebook in London is a checkbook in New York, and a cheque account is broadly what Americans call a checking account.
The three parties are the same everywhere. The drawer writes and signs the cheque, the drawee is the bank holding the drawer's account, and the payee receives the money. In the drawer's books, issuing a cheque to a supplier debits Accounts Payable and credits Cash; in the payee's books, receiving it debits Cash and credits Accounts Receivable.
Paper cheques are now usually cleared by image rather than by moving the physical document, a process known as check truncation. Cheque use has fallen sharply in most countries as cards and instant bank transfers have replaced it.