Please don't send checks.. I can't think of a more annoying way to get paid! Regardless of the accounting particulars which have been discussed here, there's bound to be a much better way of actually paying folks.
Edit: I’m talking about paying/being paid as a contractor/vendor, not as an employee.
The direct deposit fee is, at most, a couple of dollars per paycheck, and the employer should be paying that.
It's 2019. Paying employees by printed check is as silly as sending day-to-day inter-office communications by fax.
If the US were willing to put tighter rules around bank transfer fees, it would be possible to create a European style system where bank to bank transfers are free, regardless of which bank you're with.
It's not silly, it's a waste of my time - and I value my time, that's why I bill for it in the first place. If I have the choice between a Faster Payment scheme transaction which transfers money generally instantly and always within two hours, and a cheque I have to post/bring to a branch and then wait _days_ for it to clear - I'm going to pick the Faster Payments route.
> Many banks even accept the check deposit via app now
Still a waste of time. Need to wait to receive the cheque. Need to take a photo of it. Need to wait for funds to clear. It's just dumb in 2019, we can do so much better.
>Why would you be OK with giving up a certain percentage of your hard-earned money just because you have to go through the “hassle” of dealing with a piece of paper?
Why on earth do you pay for bank transfers in the US? My bank does not charge for personal transfers. My business account doesn't charge for transfers either. It's such a basic service which costs pence per transaction (easily made up by interest and interchange income).. how could you ever justify charging for it?
In any case, surely it's such an insignificant sum it really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things? The client is paying an invoice presumably a few orders of magnitude larger.
It's little effort to actually deposit it. But big companies tend to sit in tall towers in the middle of traffic jams, where parking is difficult to find.
As a contractor, I would be fine taking a pay cut of up to $100 to avoid checks.
ON the other hand, there are many free (or nearly free) ways to send money between accounts here in the Netherlands.