A question for US account holders in the UK regarding cheque payments

This is probably a very niche question, but it may be relevant to enough users to warrant being placed in the forum.

If someone lives in the UK but has a US account (they’re a US citizen and have both UK and US Monzo accounts), is there a way to deposit cheques which are sent from the US without sending them all the way back over the Atlantic?

I guess the ideal solution would be to send them to the UK office, but I’m not sure how you could facilitate it from there, either technically or logistically.

As an aside, it’s very very cool having both accounts in the same app!

Someone asked a similar question a couple of days ago.

There are two comments in the topic that may help:

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Yeah, echoing the last comment in the thread @Ordog linked to, I think the only way is to open a second US bank account with a bank that supports cheque imaging, image the cheque in that app, then transfer to your Monzo US account.

Great, thanks. This may require some minor VPN trickery as the cheque imaging app for my partner’s US bank won’t work unless it thinks you’re in the US yourself. On balance it might be safer/seem less like fraud to just bite the bullet and post it back.

This thread has pretty much run its course though. Thanks both.

2 Likes

One more thing to consider is to sign up for another account somewhere that doesn’t mind you doing check imaging from outside the US. For example, I’ve banked with Schwab and used their app to deposit bank drafts while in China without issue.

EDIT: For reference, this was to deposit US bank drafts. Bank of China was able to issue US dollar bank drafts within China using their NYC branch and I took advantage of this, saving me the cable fee normally associated with a wire transfer.

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I’m British, so haven’t actually used the Charles Schwab Account, but I have heard about it and it seems excellent.

Apparently, if you are a US Citizen with a US address, you can actually apply for it completely online and normally they will be able to open it after conducting electronic checks only.

It’s possible to do this outside the US, even, but if you do you need to use a US-based VPN, or the application will detect you’re abroad and ask you to present yourself at a branch to finalise account opening. Apparently people have had success with a VPN though!

I would try this if I were you, as it also seems like a great all-round account so worth having anyway.

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