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How well known you are to the bank matters. My grandfather was a builder and if he didn't have his checkbook on him, he would pay a subcontractor via a check wr
by chiph 3y ago
How well known you are to the bank matters. My grandfather was a builder and if he didn't have his checkbook on him, he would pay a subcontractor via a check written on whatever piece of scrap wood was around. The local bank had no problem with depositing it because he'd done it many times before and he had a good reputation in town.
Many of the rules and regulations have come about because writing checks became a non-local thing. You'd send off a check to pay for a magazine subscription and it'd get processed somewhere far away, like South Dakota. They don't know who you are, so like the article said - writing a check became an extension of credit, and the writer needed some verification as to their creditworthiness.
- throwaway2037 3y agoWoah, what year? How can this be legal?
- chiph 3y agoThis was the late 1930's so quite long ago. Pretty much every bank now has policies that would cause them to seriously object to a roof shingle being used as a check. So not illegal - just very unlikely to be accepted. Could you create your own paper checks? I think you can, as long as it looks/feels like a check and has all the info on it in the correct places. You don't have to use any security features to prevent check washing (but it's a good idea). You don't even need the magnetic ink, as the check will be optically scanned, with hand-processing as a fallback (they will attach a MICR correction strip). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_ink_character_recognition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_ink_character_recogni...