When anyone opens a current account at a bank, he is lending the bank money, repayment of which he
may demand at any time, either in cash or by drawing a cheque in favour of another person.
Primarily, the banker-customer relationship is that of debtor and creditor -- who is which
depending on whether the customer's account is in credit or is overdrawn. But, in addition to that
basically simple concept, the bank and its customer owe a large number of obligations to one
another. Many of these obligations can give rise to problems and complications but a bank customer,
unlike, say, a buyer of goods, cannot complain that the law is loaded against him. The bank must
obey its customer's instructions, and not those of anyone else. When, for example, a customer first
opens an account, he instructs the bank to debit his account only in respect of cheques drawn by
himself. He gives the bank specimens of his signature, and there is a very firm rule that the bank
has no right or authority to pay out a customer's money on a cheque on which its customer's
signature has been forged. It makes no difference that the forgery may have been a very skillful
one: the bank must recognize its customer's signature. For this reason there is no risk to the
customer in the practice, adopted by banks, of printing the customer's name on his cheques. If this
facilitates forgery, it is the bank which will lose, not the customer.