kiting
Kiting means using the delay between when a cheque is written and when it actually clears to create money that does not really exist yet, even for a few days.
In plain English
Here is the strange part. For a few days, the same money can seem to be in two places at once, and the bank itself sometimes helps this illusion along without meaning to.
That gap is what kiting lives on. A cheque leaves your account on paper before it actually leaves in cash, and if you know how to time things, you can write a cheque from an account that does not have the funds yet, deposit it into another account, and use the appearance of that deposit to cover something else, all before anyone notices the first account was empty.
Say a small trader in Onitsha has two accounts, one with Bank A and one with Bank B. He writes a cheque from Bank A for ₦800,000 even though Bank A only has ₦50,000 in it, deposits it into Bank B, and immediately withdraws cash against that deposit before Bank A's cheque bounces back. He then rushes ₦800,000 into Bank A to cover the gap before the cheque clears. If the timing works, no one loses money. If it does not, both banks are left holding a hole.
In the United Kingdom, where cheque clearing used to take several working days, this same trick had a name long before digital transfers made it harder to pull off. Some called it check kiting, some called it the float game, but banks eventually built systems specifically to catch it.
It is worth saying plainly that this is fraud, not a clever hack. Banks watch for the pattern, accounts get frozen, and people have gone to prison over it. The reason it survives at all is that clearing systems still need time to confirm funds are real, and kiting is simply someone racing that clock and hoping to win.
A cheque for ₦800,000 is deposited into an account that only ever had ₦50,000 backing it, and the person tries to cover the shortfall before the cheque bounces back three days later.
Questions people ask
Is kiting the same as writing a bounced cheque by mistake?
No. A genuine mistake is carelessness, but kiting is deliberate, timed, and usually involves more than one account working together to hide a shortfall.
Can kiting happen with bank transfers instead of cheques?
It is much harder now because transfers clear almost instantly, which is one reason cheques were the classic tool for this and why the trick has faded as digital payments have grown.
What happens if a bank catches someone kiting cheques?
Accounts are usually frozen immediately, the bank reports it, and depending on the amount involved it can lead to criminal charges rather than just a fine or a warning.
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