MANILA - The clearing time for checks will be reduced to just one banking day starting Friday, as banks start adopting a new electronic system, authorities said.

Under the manual clearing system, checks need three to five days before they are cleared and are sometimes hampered by traffic jams and natural disasters.

Check clearing in the country is handled by the Philippine Clearing House Corp., equally co-owned by commercial banks. It processes 704,000 items on average daily from 5,600 bank branches, according to its website.

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Banks that are compliant with the new system only need to exchange electronic copies of checks to facilitate transactions, according to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.

The BSP also advised depositors to get in touch with their banks on how they could use the new system.

With electronic clearing, checks will not be accepted if they have erasures, even those that are countersigned, and if they are incompletely filled out.