Challans

A challan, or bank challan, is an official document used to move money from one account to another. It works a lot like a deposit slip, where you’d normally fill in the recipient’s details yourself before depositing cash or making a transfer, except with a challan, those details are already filled in. The merchant generates it ahead of time with the recipient and amount pre-set.

An e-challan does the same job, just electronically. You could also think of it as a standard format for depositing or remitting statutory payments at a bank or treasury.