an agency for collection, classification, and distribution, especially of information or other matter or items requiring wide distribution, centralized and computerized system for setting indebtedness between members. The best known in the UK is the Association for Payment Clearing Services (APACS), which enables the member banks to offset claims against one another for cheques and orders paid into banks other than those upon which they were drawn. Similar arrangements exist in some commodity exchanges, in which sales and purchases are registered with the clearing-house for settlement at the end of the accounting period.