29 thoughts on “What do the numbers at the bottom of a Canadian cheque mean?

  1. *NNN* *TTTTT*YYY* BBBB*AAAAAAA*

    N= cheque number
    Y= bank (which in your case I imagine is 003 for TD, BMO = 001, etc)
    T= Branch (5 digits with alberta ending in 9, Sask in 8, BC =?)
    Deductive reasoning is that the B’s and A’s are your account number

    I direct deposit off cheques many times a month. I am 100% sure on that one ;)

  2. Since so many people have the same questions of finding their account information, why don’t they print on the cheque, underneath the numbers what they mean? (This is just a retorical question…) Everyone can try their own guess…

  3. I wasn’t able to find this information on TD’s web site.

    When I Googled “TD bank cheque codes” your page was the first hit. Excellent information. Just goes to show how inept some corporate web sites are.

    Thank you

  4. The Canadian Payments Association operates and maintains national systems for the clearing and settlement of payments within Canada; their website (http://www.cdnpay.ca) contains excellent information including a list of bank & transit number for all Canadian bank locations (updated weekly).

  5. Awesome info! As stated by others in this Comments section, your site (luckily) shows up high on a google search. Thanks for making this information so readily accessible. As I first went to search, i anticipated having to wade through pages and pages of info before finding this! Thanks for saving me all that time!

  6. For TD, what does the designation number (BBBB) mean?

    If I’m wanting to do a withdraw from a website and it asks for my account number, do I include this designation number or do I only enter my account number (AAAAAAA).

    On a sidenote, Vancity cheques have a format: BBAAAAAAA (where BB is the type of account you have, ie. chequing, savings, usd, etc).

    • I have been having trouble setting up my direct deposit from my U.S.-based employer to my new TD Canada Trust checking (chequing) account for about a month (paid every two weeks). First I had the wrong routing number and today I found out that I was using an incorrect account number. I had mistakenly been using the transit (branch) number (TTTT above) as part of the 11-digit account number. I called TD Canada Trust, and they indicated that the correct account number to use is the designation number (BBBB) and account number (AAAAAAA) together. Therefore, use BBBBAAAAAAA.

    • Further update: I called TD Canada Trust again today. For direct deposit, one must also use the transit (branch) number. So, the account number for direct deposit purposes will be TTTTT-BBBBAAAAAAA. Apparently, the TTTTT is the only way for the direct deposit to tell exactly which branch your money is supposed to go to, and the dash (-) is needed too. This is all a bit different than making a direct deposit to a U.S. bank.

  7. The format is: AAA-BBBBB-CCC-DDDD-EEEEEEE

    AAA= Cheque number, found in the top right hand corner as well
    BBBBB=Transit number, which is the branch number + 1 digit to identify province of origin
    CCC= Institution code, for TD, 004 as mentioned above
    DDDD= this is something called designation number, in some cases the same as branch number, but in most cases different, this is only used for pre-autorized payments.
    EEEEEEE= this is your 7 digit account number. the full account number needed for pre-autorized payments as well as direct deposit consist of the last 2 groups, so DDDD-EEEEEEE
    If by any chance the account was a previous Canada Trust account opened prior to 2003, the designation code (DDDD) will probably not be there as this was originally a coding from TD bank.

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