> Never give out your primary bank account information to any merchant.
This is pretty ridiculous advice, since every time you write a check, the recipient receives your bank account information. It's printed right at the bottom of the check!
This is pretty ridiculous advice, since every time you write a check, the recipient receives your bank account information. It's printed right at the bottom of the check!
I also cut checks as part of online bill payments. If the bank can't identify an electronic recipient, then the payment gets mailed out on a paper check. This happens for my landlord, and anything I can't set up for AutoPay from the other side. I can even send money to friends this way: anyone with a postal address, and I don't pay fees or postage for this Bill Pay service.
In fact, I make use of Bill Pay so much that I didn't reorder checks for one account. My father was mystified by that decision.
Check fraud is massively on the rise. They don't even need a physical check, just the info. They're printing their own checks now and depositing them electronically. They also hire homeless right off the street to go in and cash the checks for them. Homeless keeps $100, the fraudsters make the rest.
If you're using checks the way you say you are, it's only a matter of time before you have to deal with swapping out bank account numbers.
They are most definitely not cashier's checks. I checked both institutions and both of them issue actual checks on my account. The only difference is their sequence numbers. The money doesn't leave my account until the recipient deposits them. I have, in the past, issued stop payment orders for them.