Show HN: Check Supply – Send Checks in the Mail

[pfista]

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]

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]

>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]

> 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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

[mikeryan]

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]

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.

[j0hnjjun9]

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.

[anonymousiam]

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]

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]

> 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]

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]

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.

[vorador]

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

[epcoa]

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]

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

[ljosa]

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]

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

[tqwhite]

Seven Bucks Per Check!!!

Cool idea. Too rich for my blood.

[alwa]

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]

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.

[sneak]

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]

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.

[pfista]

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

To prevent fraud

[lxgr]

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.

[deathanatos]

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

My (US) bank has this functionality. It's a real pain to set up, and most people I know will prefer Venmo/Paypal, or god help me Zello, before a bank-to-bank transfer.

> my bank and I can agree on any security measures we like

Well … so it's more like my bank and I can agree on any security measures the bank likes. My opinion doesn't matter to them, or there'd be some actual cryptography involved.

My bank's set up / "security" involves an odd song and dance of depositing a few cents into the destination's bank account over multiple transactions over multiple days, and then using the transaction amounts as some sort of authentication.

I've done it for transfers that exceed what I am comfortable sending on the payment services above. (And I don't have/use checks.)

[0_____0]

India has UPI. The RBI spun it up in what, a couple years?

The issue isn't technological, it's this notion in the US that rent-seekers ought to exist and be enabled. Your Paypal/Venmo, CashApp, etc. enable things, for a cut of the transaction, that you can do for exactly zero dollars in India.

[gruez]

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

ACH and Zelle are both "push" transfers, although the former isn't typically available to consumers. Businesses certainly use it to do direct payroll deposits, for instance.

[jqpabc123]

It's still baffling to me that the US

Baffle no more --- it's called FedNow.

https://explore.fednow.org/

[4ndrewl]

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

[repiret]

I write a dozen checks or so a month. US banks typically do not charge someone to receive a paper check, and the only cost of writing a paper check is acquiring the piece of paper, which doesn’t need to be bought from the bank and is relatively inexpensive.

Furthermore, all electronic payment systems in the US are either operated by for-profit companies (VISA, Venmo), or are not available to consumers for one off transactions (ACH).

The result is that for many circumstances, paper checks are the cheapest way to move money around, even after accounting for their credit and fraud risks.

I write paper checks for:

• municipal utilities that either don’t accept electronic payment, or have a surcharge for electronic payment that exceeds my costs for writing checks.

• services provided by individuals or sometimes small businesses. While these sorts of people accept Venmo and their competitors more often than they used to, many of them still prefer a check.

• quarterly state and federal tax payments. While these guys accept EFT, the websites are terrible so it’s usually a better use of my time to mail a check.

• anybody who will give me a greater than 1.5% discount for paying by check rather than credit card. Contractors and small medical offices fall into this category most often. But sometimes also local shops for large ticket purchases.

[4ndrewl]

Based in the UK, some of these answers are absolutely wild. It's probably 20 years since I've written a cheque - certainly we don't routinely have chequebooks any more.

Pretty much everything is done through electronic transfers - either Direct Debits, which occur on a regular (usually monthly) basis, or ad-hoc payments a straightforward transfer which are rated to go through within a few hours, but which usually happens within 1 minute.

Does anyone know what conditions need to be in place for this level of convenience to take place?

It does mean we're liable to pesky IT issues though: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd9qzg92g72o

[deathanatos]

I've written one check in the last two decades, because it was the only overlapping means by which me & the destination merchant could transact.

It almost happened twice, but the other time it actually ended up being a direct bank-to-bank transfer.

Where it happens IME is large value transactions, where the merchant isn't capable of ACH, basically. Any normal bill payment like rent or utilities can do ACH, so that leaves large purchases. The one above was for a car.

[coldpie]

I'd say I write about 2 to 6 checks per year? It's the easiest payment method that doesn't come with transaction fees (eg 0.3-5% for a card; similar for app payments). So it's pretty common for higher-ticket items where the transaction fee costs much more than a check+stamp and neither party wants to eat that cost. Things like paying home contractors, property taxes, buying a car or other expensive items.

[pavel_lishin]

Really depends. I think we have to write one maybe every other month? We own a house, and a lot of contractors (plumbers, electricians, etc) will accept cash or check - and while paying $300 cash for a plumbing job is easy, it's more difficult to get $7500 in cash out of the bank to pay for a heavier renovation project.

If you rent, you'll often have to send a check off monthly.

I don't remember the last time I've mailed a check, however.

[bigstrat2003]

I would say approximately quarterly for me, maybe yearly. Some people only want a check, and also checks Just Work in a way that digital payments don't. Like, I can't use Venmo because they absolutely refuse to verify my bank account, so for anyone who takes Venmo or a check it means I need to pay them by check. It's uncommon, but common enough that it's still a basic part of being a functional adult.

[ryandrake]

I wrote 37 checks in the last 12 months, not counting my bank's online Bill Pay which itself is just an automation for writing and mailing physical checks. If you counted Bill Pay, I've probably paid with checks about 100 times in the last year. Like others said, mostly contractors and service providers for the home, and regular utility bills. Also property taxes. I go through checks like crazy.

[buildsjets]

I write a physical check maybe every other year or so. I receive maybe 4 or 5 physical checks a year, either from older relatives or compensation from companies. I deposit them with my bank's cellphone app so it is no hassle at all.

[0_____0]

I paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to my contractors via paper cheques. Completely wild to me as someone who grew up with the practice. You'd think we had a better way, but wires and ACH transfers are still relatively clunky.

[sparrish]

We still use them monthly (about 6 a month). I've been shafted by ACH autopay too many times to trust any company with electronic payments anymore. Fallen back to just writing checks for utilities, mortgage, etc.

[BeetleB]

$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]

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.

[subhro]

> 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?

[pfista]

Hah!

Yes, it's pretty incredible actually

[pintxo]

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]

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).

[subpixel]

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

[bigstrat2003]

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]

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]

> 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]

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]

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

[pavel_lishin]

In our defense, we don't write cheques, we write checks :)

[pfista]

Believe it or not I still have the Tanner Goods leather wallet that they gave as a gift for referring people to their app.

Best wallet ever

[ceejayoz]

Their "take $X dollars out of my account every day to save up for $Y,YYY" thing was delightful.

[mprast]

my partner was in love with them; every time we talk about UI design, she mentions Simple. RIP