Show HN: Check Supply – Send Checks in the Mail

Show HN: Check Supply – Send Checks in the Mail(check.supply)

38 points by pfista 1 year ago | 89 comments

When I lived in SF, my landlord required rent payments via check. For a while I just used my bank's bill-pay. If you remember Simple, they eventually killed their bill pay feature, and then they later shutdown altogether. I didn't want to buy a checkbook, stamps, and envelopes just for this one bill.

That's why I built Checks Supply with a friend to make check sending as simple as sending cash on Venmo. With our app, you can fill out your check details and have your payment processing within minutes after downloading.

Check writing is becoming a rarity, and many first-time senders find the process daunting. We hope Check Supply is a quick and convenient option for those moments you're puzzled why someone is asking you to pay by check.

MichaelApproved 1 year ago |

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?

gruez 1 year ago | |

>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?

There's no reason to. You can already write a check for more than your account balance. The service also generates the checks using your account number, so they're not taking on any credit risk in case your account is overdrawn.

lxgr 1 year ago | |

> 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).

It's not risky at all when using "overdraft protection" via a linked savings account.

And why would I want to not receive any interest while a physical object representing the payment (I'm still not over how bizarre that is in 2025!) is making its way to the payee in the mail?

pfista 1 year ago | |

Varo is one. But even the ones that do support it like "Chime" have online comments like this:

"Chime is great for everything else, but their check features are absolute trash and will cause you frustration. Just don't do it and find another option."

> 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?

That is one of our fraud signals. We have systems in place to review payment amounts, address, frequency, etc that can cause additional KYC checks to be preformed via Plaid before we'll send the check.

manishsharan 1 year ago |

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.

phoenixy1 1 year ago | |

TD Bank has signed a data sharing agreement with Plaid: https://stories.td.com/ca/en/news/2023-12-14-td-bank-group-a...

ceejayoz 1 year ago | |

Plaid, when able, uses OAuth or similar APIs; they (and all the other financial aggregators) use screen scraping only when that's not a possibility. A lot of the big banks have already made a deal with Plaid in this regard.

If you have a Capital One or Citi account, both use a direct integration.

lxgr 1 year ago | | |

That doesn't solve the problem of Plaid granting access to an absurd amount of financial details to their users (i.e. the companies to which I'm "verifying my bank account").

My account number is fine (and the entire point). My balance and last n transactions? That's just absurd and shows both how broken the US retail banking landscape is in many aspects, and the level of Stockholm syndrome exhibited by a large fraction of their depositors.

mikeryan 1 year ago |

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?

pfista 1 year ago | |

Yes most of the major banks do, but many neo banks don't. Upside is convenience and speed for folks that don't have a bank with billpay.

ryandrake 1 year ago | | |

Not sure what a neo bank is, but I don't think I'd trust an institution with my money that couldn't even be bothered to integrate the standard "check writing and mailing" package. I'm pretty sure every instance of "Bill Pay" is the same software, re-skinned for the bank's color scheme.

j0hnjjun9 1 year ago | |

Have you ever lost a bill pay check or have someone follow up and say they didn’t receive it?

With BillPay, they deduct the amount you pay on the day of, the banks take their sweet time to send the check because they want to slow down the money.

If you lose the check, it’s a lot more overhead to cancel and get your money back.

unsnap_biceps 1 year ago | | |

My bank does not take the money out before it's cashed by the receiver

epcoa 1 year ago | | |

> the banks take their sweet time to send the check because they want to slow down the money.

Maybe some shit banks, but a decent bank like Ally will try to have the check delivered by the due date chosen (mailing out a few days prior). There isn’t much money to be made this way. If you knew they were always late you’d just adjust the date back anyway. Decent banks don’t play petty games like this.

For electronic payments the money is withdrawn similar to an ACH, for paper checks any reputable bank will withdraw the money only when the check is cashed.

anonymousiam 1 year ago |

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

quaffapint 1 year ago |

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.

api_or_ipa 1 year ago |

> 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

apsurd 1 year ago |

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.

j0hnjjun9 1 year ago | |

What we found was bill pay is a lot slower and doesn’t give you any indication of if and when the check is cashed because they deduct that amount on the day you send.

So that might be another reason your dad might be doing this.

epcoa 1 year ago | | |

> What we found was bill pay is a lot slower and doesn’t give you any indication of if and when the check is cashed because they deduct that amount on the day you send.

Use a less shitty bank. For any reputable bank if the payment is made my paper mailed check the money is withdrawn only when the check is cashed.

apsurd 1 year ago | | |

that's a good point, yes he grew very annoyed of how bill pay works. The UX is rather lacking. he didn't like not feeling in control of it, was opaque to him, now that i remember.

it's a down side of "set it and forget it". if i remember correctly his bill pay was to pay down a medical bill, over time the details of his balance changed and it became annoyingly obtuse to him on how to change the bill pay settings.

vorador 1 year ago |

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

epcoa 1 year ago | |

1. Open Ally Bank account (there are others but this definitely works)

2. Setup recurring bill pay for your check payment.

3. Setup recurring external transfer from your hipster bank to Ally or equivalent in step 1.

$6.99 isn’t worth replacing the above system that has another distinct advantage over this: you have two layers of cushion from your main account. My understanding is that this service will print your account details on the check. The “bill pay” services typically are not writing checks against your account, they withdraw the money and use their own account. Knowing the horror stories of intercepted checks that are cashed, this is not a triviality.

nickphx 1 year ago |

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

ljosa 1 year ago |

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.

pfista 1 year ago | |

Yes, many banks do offer this. But some neobanks don't. We're going after a niche market here :)

tqwhite 1 year ago |

Seven Bucks Per Check!!!

Cool idea. Too rich for my blood.

alwa 1 year ago |

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.

pfista 1 year ago | |

Thanks, appreciate the comment!

> Cash App us a lump of cash and we’ll send it somewhere by check

Funny thing about sending checks is it's just an account and routing number in a special font on a piece of paper. We don't touch any customer funds.

> Am I missing something that differentiates what you do from what they do?

We have a simpler UI with a focus just on sending the check, so having your contacts prefilled make it quick and easy. But, if your bank already supports this then probably not for you!

If we grow the app enough, we'll add more features like scheduled / recurring payments and tracking for delivery and when the check is deposited.

alwa 1 year ago | | |

> Funny thing about sending checks is it's just an account and routing number in a special font on a piece of paper. We don't touch any customer funds.

Oh that’s so cool! I hadn’t even thought about that operational aspect. Very clever: I guess that means you’re an easy, slick option for customers from an awfully long list of banks and neobanks with varying quality of native products.

sneak 1 year ago |

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.

ryandrake 1 year ago | |

Technically, a check can be scribbled on a napkin in crayon, as long as it contains the sender’s account and routing numbers, and the payee, and the amount. It’s just an instruction note to a bank saying pay this person from this account.

function_seven 1 year ago | | |

I was told that a long time ago. But it turns out if your routing and account numbers aren't MICR'd, and you in fact hand wrote the entire instrument, it will not work.

(We tried it a couple times at two different banks. With n=2, our p value was < 0.05 :)

Is there some sort of standards document somewhere that outlines the minimum viable check? Because handwritten in crayon on a napkin... I don't think that even "technically" counts. At least not anymore.

But on the other hand, I suppose a payee could accept your Crayola-napkin-check and just punch the numbers into their electronic check submission system?

dylan604 1 year ago | | |

Accept now bank will accept this "technically a check". If they can't send it through their reader for scanning, then it will not be accepted. As someone else posted in another comment, the fonts and placement of the information on a check is standardized for ease of automatic reading.

pfista 1 year ago | |

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

To prevent fraud

repiret 1 year ago | | |

There are numerous outfits that you can go to online to order blank checks. And of the small number that I have used, all of them let me just type in my routing number and account number and other information that appears printed on the check.

Your use of Plaid would exclude me from your service for two reasons:

1: I bank at a small regional credit union that is almost impossible to get linked with Plaid.

2: Plaid hypothetically lets you do a lot more than just learn my account and routing number. I would not trust a new start up with that level of access.

Given that relatively few things require the MICR numbers to be printed with magnetized ink anymore, it’s not clear what fraud someone could commit with your service that they couldn’t commit just as easily commit in a dozen different ways and that we can’t really prevent without a systematic overhaul of the paper check system

lxgr 1 year ago |

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.

4ndrewl 1 year ago |

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

BeetleB 1 year ago |

$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?!

j0hnjjun9 1 year ago | |

Yup our target market is for people who are busy and want instant gratification that something got done.

Envelopes, checks, postage, gas / your time trip to the post office - agreed isn’t a lot of money probably about $3 + your time.

BeetleB 1 year ago | | |

People pay more for worse things, so I can see you'll get money out of this.

> Envelopes, checks, postage, gas / your time trip to the post office - agreed isn’t a lot of money probably about $3 + your time.

Less. Gas is not a factor. Envelopes are at the grocery store, which I'm going to go to any way. Postage is sold at Costco, so that's not really extra. And the mailbox is right where I live. The time to get to the mailbox doesn't count as, well, I do need to check my mail anyway. So really, the only time spent is:

1. Finding the items at the stores I already shop at.

2. Write the check.

3. Apply the stamp.

lxgr 1 year ago | | |

When abroad and close to a payment deadline, I can easily see myself paying $7. International express mail is often more expensive and sometimes less reliable.

subhro 1 year ago |

> 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?

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

pfista 1 year ago | |

Hah!

Yes, it's pretty incredible actually

pintxo 1 year ago |

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.

lxgr 1 year ago | |

Even long before banking became digital, most European countries had an efficient bank transfer system in place in parallel to checks.

Both have their advantages, and I accordingly find it baffling that the US only got one, but not the other, and even more baffling that this has largely survived the transition to digital transfers (consumers usually can't initiate ACH credit transfers to third parties directly).

miki123211 1 year ago | | |

Meanwhile, most European countries are now left with nothing but a bank transfer system.

This is mostly fine, but the ability to essentially give somebody cash in-person without actually having the cash would come in handy sometimes.

I know checks can bounce, but I always feel a bit uneasy when I tell people "hey I just send you a transfer I promise, it's friday so it'll probably arrive after the weekend, here's the transfer confirmation PDF that I so totally couldn't forge in 10 minutes."

subpixel 1 year ago |

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

bigstrat2003 1 year ago |

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?

pfista 1 year ago | |

I think having a checkbook used to be a basic part of being a functional adult, but there's a whole new generation of people that have never sent a check before.

There are still a lot of businesses and government agencies that require payments to be sent by check.

It's paying for convenience. Name any "basic adulting" task and I'll show you a service that can do it for you. House cleaning, taxes, groceries, laundry, childcare, etc.

deathanatos 1 year ago | |

> Having a checkbook, envelopes and stamps is a basic part of being a functional adult.

I haven't had a checkbook for well over a decade. I seem to function.

> It's not hard or expensive to do, so why on earth would anyone want to pay you to handle basic adulting for them?

It costs money / banks charge for checks. I don't have any use for them (nearly anything I could write a check for can be handled by ACH or card) … so why pay for a service I'm not using?

(The lone check that I did need to write in the last 2 decades, in theory the procedure is "go to bank, ask for check, receive check". The bank managed to screw that up, so it took a bit more than that, but that's par for the course for companies these days.)

function_seven 1 year ago | |

I haven't had a checkbook in 5 years. I did have one for the 25 years before that. But then nobody wanted a check from me anymore, so I decided not to spend the money on a box of checks when I moved.

I have one person I need to pay each month with a check. They get it mailed to them from my credit union's bill pay service. Anyone else can either accept cash, ApplePay, Zelle, or a card.

This to me seems similar to the app I use to fax things. It costs $1 a page I think? And is totally worth it for the one time I need to fax a document every five years or so.

lxgr 1 year ago | |

You're assuming everybody has convenient access to a USPS mailbox too. Try "just" writing and mailing a check when traveling internationally, for example.