I heard a news story recently about how TD Bank is considering buying RBS Citizens bank (one of the largest banks in the eastern US). This is of interest to me because I bank with Citizens. (Technically, I bank with Charter One, which is the name Citizens uses in my state to avoid confusion with another bank named “Citizens”. But that’s not important.) I recently ordered checks, and have several unused books. Let’s say that TD buys up Citizens and re-brands all of the banks as TD Bank. Would my old checks still be good, or would I have to shred them and order new checks?
Our bank has been bought out three times and in all cases the old checks were good- to a certain extent. Out account number has never changed and that’s the key thing on the bottom of the check. As long as that is still the same you are good. Almost.
The main catch is that some people might be wary of taking a check for a no longer existent (seemingly) bank. If your old bank was quite well known and the merger/buyout was in the news, that helps overcome this.
As long as the account number and the routing number stay the same , the checks will still be good. Some small businesses may not accept them , but it will basically be the same places that don’t accept starter checks, checks without a preprinted name and address, checks numbered under 100, etc.
I use my checks to pay utility & credit card bills, and to settle personal debts. Citizens/Charter One is a major-league bank, on par with guys like Wells Fargo and Bank of America, so I doubt name recognition would be an issue. Supposedly, the deal would be worth $13 billion.
And hey, you’d be bought by a Canadian bank! Stability all around! 
(TD Bank is owned by the Toronto-Dominion Bank Group.)
I still have some old checks that use my bank’s old name from before its merger back in 2005. The bank still accepts them.
I’ve used the same bank for 25 years, with 3 different names. Each time they let me use my checks until my supply was exhausted.
I used Seafirst checks for years and years after Bank of America bought and absorbed them. The routing # and account # on the checks hadn’t changed, and that’s the most important thing about them.
I’ve been paying my rent with Washington Mutual checks with no problem. The routing number still works, even though Chase’s is different.
One of my previous roles in banking was this. They basically dump all of the old routing numbers and account numbers into the new bank’s database so the system will recognize them, so there’s no problem on that end. What might delay processing is the depositor knowing what to do with it. Place with a lot of automation process everything and waits for something to come back; some tiny place doing it by hand will hold it thinking it won’t go thru (“hey, those guys went under or something - what are you trying to pull?”)
Had a bank that went bust due to fraud. It was taken over by another bank and the FDIC covered the deposits. We kept using our old checks.
The guys who were behind the fraud all plead guilty and served around 10 years in prison. They were all millionaires but lost everything.
This. I quit using my WaMu checks years ago, and used that account solely for on-line payments. Then WaMu went splat and Chase bought them. But my account number and routing number stayed the same.
Fast forward 5 years, to last week. I bought a big-ticket item ([del]new[/del] less old car) and paid in full with an old WaMu check. (To make it even more interesting, it has my old-old-old pre-printed address, crossed out with handwritten less-old address.)
Bank has told me a few times that those checks are still good. Car dealer finance manager called bank and got same answer. He took the check. Fast forward another week, to 2 days ago. Bank paid the check. No problemo.
ETA: But who knows? YMMV. Ask you bank.
Ditto all the above, for my Wachovia checks that are now Wells Fargo, and whatever they were before Wachovia too.
I wouldn’t think there’d ever be a problem. If your bank is acquired by another, the acquiring bank still have to honor all of your bank’s obligations, including your account with your old bank.
Maybe, maybe not. Calling your bank and asking after said merger would take less time and be more decisive than creating a forum thread. Only they could possibly know for sure. I work at a bank and routing numbers change, which creates a behind-the-scenes headache when someone uses an old one. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
As long as the ABA number doesn’t change, you will be OK. Even if it does, typically the FRB will accept checks for both ABA’s for 6 months to a year. Longer if the bank requests it. If the bank sends you a letter requesting that you re-order checks because of the change, well then, you’ll have their definitive answer.
Work for a bank. Merged with another bank. Been through this exact situation.
That’s the policy, but the problem is often the implementation - how they choose to handle the change-over. If the way they do it delays processing, it’s a hassle for the customer even though they eventually get around to honoring the check. Then there are cases where someone uses a check printed 6 years ago - it doesn’t take long before you’ve got new people flagging every check from WaMu for a fraud verification because they’ve never heard of them…
So with a bunch of Teeming Millionths reporting that old checks work just fine, I wonder: what happens when two banks merge, and they’ve both issued the same account number?
We actually had this happen. Bear in mind the old checks will have the old routing number as well - other institutions will know where to send it, but the payee bank can just set-up a sort of macrofilter to route valid account numbers with old routing numbers to what we called “exceptions.” Someone there would look up the merged customer’s new account number and manually enter it, so it would be charged to the proper account. We had millions of account numbers and we fixed maybe 50 a day.
The problem would arise if for some reason the item was handled manually for some reason - some go-getter would change the routing number to the current post-merger one in the system, throw it back into the automated processing stream; the filter can’t catch it since the routing number was changed and we’ve got some poor schmoe on the phone screaming about his balance. You put up notices asking processors not to change anything, but people are people, so some slip thru - one every day or so, so not horrible, but the people it happens to feel differently.