Leaffan, certainly–under limited conditions:
- You can take it to the bank it was drawn on
- If the check was issued by an obviously good source (payroll check, government…), then a check cashing company or grocery store would cash it for a fee.
The banks often charge fees for that too, the bastards.
An exchange student who was staying with us was given a small check as an honorarium for helping out at a wedding at her internship location. She had no way of cashing it short of trying to find time to get to the issuing bank during open hours (and probably pay a fee). I was able to take her to a branch of a different bank near us, and have her endorse it over to me and cash it against my account, or heaven only knows how she’d have been able to get to the money.
As an aside, that experience is one good example of why one should consider carefully before going to an “online-only” bank for all one’s needs. As rare as it is, there are times where you really do need to have a place to go in person.
Something like 14-15 per year. Monthly rent, yearly tenant’s insurance, and a few random ones like workshop fees.
It may not be what he first mentions when talking about that trip, but when my brother visited me in Philadelphia, the time I saw him with his mouth hanging open was after seeing a very long line, asking what it was about and getting my explanation about cashing cheques.
That same brother now has a job where he shuffles millions across borders routinely: via e-banking, of course.
That’s what check-cashing stores are for, and there are other ways to do it too.
In the US a LOT of people don’t have bank accounts. I take it that’s not true in Canada?
…its not just Canada, but basically everywhere mentioned in this thread pretty much everyone has a bank account. The reliance on cheques, check cashing stores, the mistrust of giving out bank account numbers and banks that use different systems and “can’t talk to each other” to do simple money transfers is pretty much a US only phenomena.
Interesting thread. I haven’t written cheque or even had a chequebook for I can’t even think how long, it’s a long time though.
But I wonder if the ‘canceled check’ thing has anything to do with the reluctance of some in the US to move to online payments. I’m in Australia, and even in the days when I did have a chequebook, I never received cancelled cheques back from the bank. I’ve never seen a cancelled cheque. I don’t know if it’s something that I could have requested from the bank, but even if it was, it can’t have been common to do so because the first time I heard the term I didn’t even know what it meant. It was something I’d read sometimes in books without ever understanding why on earth you’d want or need to have that cancelled cheque in your possession…
For me, the proof of payment by cheque was that I had the stub with at least the basic details written on it and the money was gone from my account. Which is the same as what I have with internet banking/online payments - either print or save the payment confirmation or not (if you use internet banking it’ll always be there for looking up if necessary) and the transaction history shows that the money has gone from my account. I don’t even have to wait for a statement or ring the bank and ask to make sure the money has gone, it shows up straight away. If I’ve made some error in the payee details that nevertheless slips through at my end, the payment will be rejected at the payee end and returned to me. I’ve never had this happen, by the way.
I used to faithfully print out all my payment confirmations, I rarely bother these days.
Since 1995 or so the only thing I use cheques for is when a company asks for a void cheque to start an auto deposit in my account. Everything else is debit card or email transfer. I do believe that debit card use is much more ubiquitous in Canada than the States.
In the US low income people often do not have a bank account because they cannot afford one. Either they cannot pay the monthly fees or the bank straight out does not allow them to set up the account.
How does that work in other countries such that “pretty much everyone has a bank account”?
My account (in Canada) costs me about 4 cents a day and that allows me to have unlimited transactions.
What are the costs in the US I wonder?
I also wonder if the food stamp program in the US eliminated the need for the very poor to have a bank account. In Canada welfare recipients receive money (a government cheque), to spend on whatever they want.
How much are the monthly fees there??
Every job I’ve had for the last 20 or more years has paid me by direct deposit into my bank account. My tax return is deposited into my bank account.
Anyone who receives family assistance payments or unemployment benefit or an old age pension or any other form of payment from the government has it deposited into their bank account.
Strange how things can be so different!
Depend on the bank and how much money you have in it. My bank account has no fees from my bank (I do have to pay fees charged by the other bank if I use a foreign ATM), but there’s a $15,000 minimum balance across all accounts required for that (checking, savings CDs, mortgages, other loans and credit cards all count). My son has an account with a different bank with a low balance needed to avoid monthly fees- maybe $500. But his bank charges a fee when he uses another bank’s ATM in addition to the foreign bank’s fee. And his bank doesn’t have many branches/ATM’s so if he doesn’t plan well or is traveling and needs to get cash from another bank’s ATM, he’ll pay fees to both banks which will total $4-5 per withdrawal. PIN based transactions at stores are charged the same fee as ATM withdrawal, although there is no fee for signature transactions. If his balance goes below the minimum, there’s a $10 monthly fee.
I can only speak for my husband and myself, but even though we pay our bills with checks, we don’t get cancelled checks back from our credit union and haven’t for at least a decade. They do keep images of checks and we could request one if we needed it for a disputed payment, but I don’t think many banks send back cancelled checks as a matter of routine.
The reason we don’t do online bill payments is that nobody (not the payees or the financial institutions involved or any branch of the government) can offer any guarantee that our online account information will be protected or that we will not suffer financial consequences if our account is indeed compromised. We could, of course, set up a special account used only for online bill payment, but it’s just easier to write and mail the checks every month than it is to screw around with that. Besides, somebody has to keep the USPS in business, eh?
In Spain many CCs only have “maintenance fees” if you don’t fulfill some easy-to-fulfill requirements such as getting your salary there or paying three utility bills from there; the bank makes its profit from transaction fees, loans, etc. My yearly maintenance fees from two bank accounts, two credit Visas and two Visa Electron total less than 10€. One of those banks has my mortgage and my at-home utilities, the other one is my “business account” so it’s what I use to pay my on-site utilities, and it’s where I get paid and from where I spend most money.
The first time I went to Germany, I went to a bank office, apologized for my bad German and asked to open an account. The lady asked what for (she needed to know in order to pick the right kind). I explained, “I have enough money for the three months I’m going to stay here and want it to be safe”. She didn’t like opening an account she knew she was going to close in three months, but she did.
The first time I went to the US, I and every other incoming foreign student at my university were set up with bank accounts as part of our processing: on the same day we had to register, get our student IDs, request our SS card… there were several banks there, all set up to stash our money. Later when I wanted to get some money invested, I was pretty much treated like shit: I went to 25 banks and the one that got my money was the only one where the employee gave me information (at several locations I was told “we don’t have any CDs available” by someone who had a poster advertising CDs right behind them).
The cost of cashing your checks at a shark is much higher than that of a bank account, or at least higher than that of any of the bank accounts I had (at least if you can avoid overdraft charges; given that US banks hunt those purposefully, it isn’t as easy as “making sure you have enough money”). But with people like that lady from my second US stay, yeah, opening a bank account can be a rabid bitch.
I’m not sure whether a bank would refuse to set up an account for someone here, I’ve never met someone who doesn’t have an account. Account fees vary, the bank account I have “normally” has an account fee of $4/month however the fee is waived in many cases. If you had to pay the fee you can always go to a different bank. The NAB has an account with no account keeping fees at all.
Fair enough. I used to worry about everything from identity theft to having my account cleaned out at first but years without any issues at all has led me to believe (perhaps incorrectly!) that, provided one takes reasonable precautions, the convenience and ease of online banking and bill paying far outweighs the risks. 
…as I said: the US is simply different. Flip the question around. How is it that there are people in the United States with an income so low they don’t have a bank account? Its simply a different paradigm. My first bank account was opened for me when I was in Primary School. (Ages between 5 and 10). Everyone in class had a “Post Office” bank account set up for them. Its something we grew up with.
I gather that it’s easier to be kicked out of banking in the US. All it takes is one mistake that you can’t afford.
A typical checking account costs about $12 a month, unless you qualify to have the fee waived (which I do). It can usually be waived in various ways, such as by having regular direct deposits, or by having a certain minimum balance.
But quite often poor people, the very people for whom $12 per month would be a hardship, don’t qualify for the waivers. They can’t meet the minimum balance and they don’t work for companies that provide direct depost pay.
Now that State Farm lets me pay my insurance bills online, pretty much the only time I write checks is to pay my doctor and dentist. (I say “pretty much” because there are rare things like buying a car (after an incident with my first car where I ended up with 19% APR on my car payments, I make it a point to pay cash when buying a car) where I will write a check.)