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Show HN: Check Supply – Send Checks in the Mail

by pfista on 2/3/25, 3:52 PM with 89 comments

• by MichaelApproved on 2/3/25, 4:18 PM

  I’m curious, what’s an example of a “neo bank” that you say doesn’t offer bill pay? I’m sure they exist, just wondering who they are.

  Bill pay sends a bank check which is covered by the immediate withdrawal of funds from the customer’s account. In most cases, the customer would be fine with that or even prefer it, to ensure they don’t accidentally bounce a check.

  However, I’m wondering if another customer base can be someone who has bank bill pay but wants to float the funds until the check is cashed. Maybe they don’t have the actual funds yet but want to write a check against funds they expect to have soon (risky but people do it).

  Do you restrict writing checks that are for an amount greater than the current account balance?

  Lastly, I’m wondering how you handle deliberate check fraud. Victims will try to sue all associated parties. How does your liability work in those cases?

• by manishsharan on 2/3/25, 4:14 PM

  I see you are using Plaid for Bank integration. The last time I checked Plaid , there were security issues with regards to how it handled passwords by copying Bank login screens. I believe TD was suing Plaid for this reason.

  I wish you best of luck but I avoid any service that uses Plaid.

• by mikeryan on 2/3/25, 3:57 PM

  Not to rain on your parade, but my Chase app already has this ability. Don’t other banks as well?

  Whats the upside of this option?

• by anonymousiam on 2/4/25, 12:54 AM

  Many people have elected to allow direct debit access to their bank accounts for routing bill payments. I've never felt comfortable with the associated risks ever since NACHA relaxed the prenotification requirements. Fortunately my banking institutions still offer a bill payment service that provides some isolation by issuing drafts and/or EFTs from an intermediate account.

  If somebody compromises your data and an unauthorized debit occurs, you'll have 60 days to detect and report the fraud for personal accounts. Business accounts have only 24 hours to detect and report the fraud.

  If you make the report after the time limit expires, your bank has no responsibility to recover your funds.

  https://firstbusiness.bank/resource-center/managing-payment-...

  https://www.nacha.org/rules/minor-rules-topics-2

• by quaffapint on 2/3/25, 4:13 PM

  Actually at a previous company we had to use a service that did exactly this because we had to send money to various businesses and they didn't all have ACH/etc setup. So we had to use a relatively archaic service and API to send out physical checks. Not sure how big of a market it is, but there is definitely a need at least on the business side.

• by api_or_ipa on 2/4/25, 1:33 AM

  > I didn't want to buy a checkbook, stamps, and envelopes just for this one bill.

  How much is a checkbook? My bank (FRB, RIP :( ) gave me, for free, like 8 years ago, an enormous box of checks that I have hardly made a dent in.

  Domestic postage is like $0.69, envelopes are, what, couple bucks for a box of 50? Amortized over a couple years, you aren’t looking at more than a dollar or two/month.

  Either send a bunch of post dated checks at once or set a calendar reminder to send a new one each month. Either way, I don’t really see a market here

• by apsurd on 2/3/25, 4:22 PM

  I join my dad occasionally to watch the lakers games on tv. Recently he had his bills set up and was writing checks and placing them in envelopes.

  I remembered specifically helping him resolve a bill pay issue for one of his payments so I asked why doesn't he use bill pay for all of them?

  He says he likes practicing writing, the physical nature, and the routine of intaking these bills and mailing them out.

  he's retired.

• by vorador on 2/3/25, 3:58 PM

  Exciting – many landlords in SF only believe in checks for some reason

• by nickphx on 2/4/25, 2:31 AM

  $7 and uses plaid for bank access? No thank you. Why would you need bank access to generate a paper check?

• by ljosa on 2/3/25, 3:56 PM

  Don”t most banks offer this exact service for free? My credit union calls it “bill pay.” I use it for exactly the use cases you list.

• by tqwhite on 2/3/25, 4:10 PM

  Seven Bucks Per Check!!!

  Cool idea. Too rich for my blood.

• by alwa on 2/3/25, 4:07 PM

  This is hilarious and wonderful, and attractive to boot. I wish you the best of luck.

  I know that the big banks I use offer this service for free (as “Bill Pay”), but maybe there are also-ran banks that don’t? Or is the aim more to address the unbanked and fintech crowds: “Cash App us a lump of dollars and we’ll send it somewhere by check”?

  You stoked my curiosity, and I looked around: at a glance, it seems like Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Capital One, and US Bank all include online bill pay (electronic if possible, with fallback to paper checks) as a built-in feature of their consumer accounts. It looks like weirder branchless ones like Ally, Neo, Chime, and SoFi do this too. Am I missing something that differentiates what you do from what they do?

  I don’t mean this as a criticism, just a curiosity! History has shown there’s often more than enough room in the market for smart, reliable, attractive purpose-built tools, even when their function overlaps with incumbents’ notional features.

• by sneak on 2/3/25, 4:04 PM

  Why does it need to be connected to your bank at all? It just needs the account, routing, and check numbers.

  I can order paper checks with arbitrary account and routing numbers on them.

  Also, for people with printers: checks don’t need to be with special ink or on special paper.

• by lxgr on 2/3/25, 4:19 PM

  It's still baffling to me that the US, unlike most other countries, have never developed "push" bank/credit transfers.

  Checks might have been useful historically, but I really can't think of any use case these days where I'd prefer writing a check over just instructing my bank to pay somebody directly, which has the huge advantage of being more secure (my bank and I can agree on any security measures we like, vs. having to trust various third parties to "authenticate" a piece of paper and a signature) and avoids having to "balance my checking account" entirely.

• by 4ndrewl on 2/3/25, 4:00 PM

  How common is check usage in the USA? Is it a daily/weekly/monthly/quarterly thing?

• by BeetleB on 2/3/25, 4:22 PM

  $6.99 per check? That's expensive!

  I have envelopes. I have stamps. And I have a checkbook. The only thing this is saving me is the (minor) physical labor?

  Not worth $6.99 per month. More for the times I have to write checks for other things (e.g. paying contractors).

  Besides, when I bought my house I bought one of those 300 address label sticker thingies. How else am I going to use those?!

• by subhro on 2/3/25, 4:25 PM

  > Check writing is becoming a rarity, and many first-time senders find the process daunting

  Now, I am scared of even the thought of pulling out my pen and writing. And you merely call it daunting?

  /s

  Some people assume people will fucking buy anything when wrapped by a pretty website eh?

• by pintxo on 2/3/25, 4:15 PM

  Good to see that there are things where Germany is not behind the US when it comes to digitalization.

  I haven’t seen a check for at least 20 years now.

  Financial transactions are all nicely digitalized by now.

• by subpixel on 2/3/25, 4:30 PM

  Your bank doesn't do this for free? Mine does (USAA).

• by bigstrat2003 on 2/3/25, 4:01 PM

  If you can find customers more power to you I guess, but I just can't see the use case here. Having a checkbook, envelopes and stamps is a basic part of being a functional adult. It's not hard or expensive to do, so why on earth would anyone want to pay you to handle basic adulting for them?