There are two services available for those businesses that accept checks.
Check processing fees beat credit cards every time, but they have some risks as well.
Bad ones costs businesses money.
Accepting them usually requires your business use a service to make sure the checks you take are good.
Check Guarantee This service has been around for a long time and is widely accepted as the standard service for check acceptance.
When a check your business accepts results in an Non Sufficient Funds return the check guarantee company will reimburse you the face value of the item depending on if it was accepted according to the guidelines they provided.
These guidelines include things like whether the writers drivers license is on the back of the check, etc.
If these guidelines are not followed they may refuse to pay, or if they do pay it may not be the entire face value.
In certain situations they may debit your account later if they cannot collect.
Fees are deducted from the amount funded and are fairly high.
Check Verification The idea of check verification is a good one.
Basically it lets you decide up front whether to take it or not by providing you information on the writers account.
This service is fairly new, but is gaining popularity very quickly.
It is done by making a real-time query via a provider to verify the status of the account.
There are a number of items can be verified.
Is it a real checking account Is the account closed Has a stop payment been issued Does the account have a negative balance Has the account been stolen or fraudulent