[chollida1]

Interesting. What constitutes "a lot of effort to cash it"?

I'm Canadian and I rarely use them but our banking app just lets you take a picture of both sides and that's it.

Also you can just put them into an ATM as a deposit and your done.

Also you can go into the bank and hand it to the teller and your done.

I'd be interested in why you had to go through alot of effort to cash your check.

[krisoft]

> I'd be interested in why you had to go through alot of effort to cash your check.

I’m not the commenter you are asking from I also used to live in central europe. There as far as I can tell the concept of a “check” simply doesn’t exist. So much so that I don’t even know what is the equivalent word in the local language. If I would get one I would need to go to my bank in person and ask them if they can do anything with. I would already count that as a hassle, but I just looked it up online and it seems my bank doesn’t handle checks. There are rummours online that some other banks do cash checks, but it seems some of those have changed their policy since and they are no longer accepting checks either.

All in all it works as well as being paid with a rai stone or a cowry sea shell, while lacking the aesthetic benefits of those.

[wiredfool]

For me, in Ireland, cashing a US check through my bank teller costs 150ish eur (that's one hundred and fifty, not a buck fifty) and takes 6 weeks. They basically have to hand process it and send it to their US correspondent bank.

At one point, I got tax refund and stimulus checks from the Treasury, and it turned out to just be easier to endorse them to my remaining US account and mail them to the branch that has my account.

In theory I could use the bank's remote deposit capture service, but: 1) The checks were too big, there's a ~$2500 limit on RDC, and 2) The bank has complained in the past that I'm not supposed to use it when I'm overseas. There's some regulation that they're worried about.

I've seen a couple of checks in Ireland that haven't been from the US, mainly tax refunds IIRC, but they're super rare and no ATMs will take them. They'll take Euros for deposits, but not checks. So it's a trip into see the Cash desk at the bank.

[hrns]

Only one bank in Poland handles them, I had to open a separate account just to cash it. As far as I remember the cashing in process took some time (about a week maybe?) and the fees were about 25% of the check value (operations + currency exchange).

There's no option in doing it from the app/ATM afaik.

[chollida1]

I don't want to dox you but I have to ask, what bank in Poland do you use that wouldn't take a check?

I've got a friend there and he says he has no problem cashing checks at his bank and has never heard of a bank not taking a check and there were no fees for cashing checks.

The exchange rate sucks but that has nothing todo with a check

EDIT he did say it can take a week for the money to clear, so that is a big downside.

[hrns]

Well, my bank did not handle them - the cashier told me that there is only one bank that handles them (Pekao SA) so I didn't waste time searching for others.

Maybe your friend has a company/businesses account? The services may be different than for a personal one.

[chollida1]

Good to know.

I appreciate you teaching me something today!!

[ghaff]

Foreign currency can be less straightforward.

Admittedly a number of years back, a Canadian company paid me for a photo of mine they found online that they wanted for an article.

Ended up having to go to a human bank teller to deposit it.