Electronic Check Cashing - We are living in the future!

So I believe I’ve mentioned the ATI HD5770 I picked up a while back… well it came with a mail in rebate from the manufacturer, which finally came yesterday in the form of a check. Suddenly, a thought crossed my mind: how the heck am I gonna cash this thing?

We don’t actually have a local bank anymore - I’ve looked into our local credit unions, but haven’t found one I particularly like (most want us to carry a balance, something we’re not particularly good at lately) and since we might be heading out to Australia soon it would be of absolutely no benefit to us.

I looked into places to cash ‘em, Walmart wants $3 apparently - for a $25 check, that just seemed a bit steep. The local check cashing place in the next town over, complete with guy behind inch-thick lexan smoking a cigar, was even more obscene in pricing.

I remembered something about my mother in law’s Chase account allowing you to cash checks with a smart phone, so I went looking at Ally’s website to see if they did it too. Turns out the answer is “kinda”.

They don’t allow you to do it with a smartphone, or a camera at all really - it must be a scanner and they’re very picky about the format it’s in. Apparently it’s a limited trial, and we’re among the lucky users allowed to do it - but when I visit their site not logged in, that feeling of elitism quickly washed away.

So anyway, we endorsed the check as instructed, drew little dots on each corner as a “cropping hint” according to the instructions, scanned the images at the recommended settings and began the wizard. All told, it was about 20 minutes’ work - I couldn’t drive to a bank in that amount of time, even if we had one locally still.

The check hasn’t cleared yet, and I’m a little concerned because it’s a rebate check (with nothing but our address on the back of it - no security features or endorsement lines or anything) - but hopefully it goes through without issue.
At least if you have to deal with something as archaic as checks, the electronic stuff makes it easier, right?

Montpelier, IN, USA

Published:


Modified:


Filed under:


Location:

Montpelier, IN, USA

Navigation: Older Entry Newer Entry