All banks, especially midsize and community banks (though large banks are certainly not immune), are dealing with bad amounts of check fraud right now.

I had a similar incident 20 plus years ago. When we first built our house the mail lady wouldn’t come up our road. And the boxes on the highway. Wife and I are in bed one night and the phone rings, it’s the police chief in Cleveland Al calling wanting to know when I was continue to pickup the bad check I had written for cash. I tell him he is crazy as hell and he tells the manager I don’t know what’s going on. He tells me what’s happened and my wife had just recently ordered checks. The guy had went to a lot of mom and pop stores and written bad checks and was returning within a week and writing another before the first had returned. I got lucky the Cleveland police chief and the manager of the piggy wiggly went to looking at mug shots. And the guy had just been released in Florida from prison on checking writing scams. They arrested him and the morning of the trail he pled out and we didn’t have to go to court. But when I went to Regions to sign off on all the checks he had written he had wrote one for cash at the regions drive through.

So the guy stole your check, washed it. Changed the amount. Cashed it. And still had the original check in the car. I can’t even understand that.

Question. How do you guys pay your credit card bill without writing a check for it??

Pay it online through my banking app. All banks have them now a days.

I go to the mailbox (Because I like to have my bills mailed) open them up, either pull out my phone or my laptop, open the banking app and pay all our bills in about a minute or two, toss the bills and I'm done.

Been doing it that way for 20 years.

Pay all of my bills online.

I pay all but one which is just a local monthly check, and maybe write less than a dozen other checks for random things the entire year.

Sometimes it is necessary but even the Post Office says don't mail checks because they can't trust their employees. No morals left in this country. Did I mention the "Left?"

I don' t think they are looking for anyone doing this. That's the problem I see. We have had issues with this for years but the last 2 years it's become rampant.

It's almost like they are allowing this and trying to force us all into paying online and doing away with a form of currency they can't control.

Where's that tinfoil hat?

For large corporations, the transfer of money is done electronically. As the OP stated, I too have my bank mail my pest control company a check via my bank app. The bank pays for the postage and the check being sent cannot be washed or altered without destroying it.

I send my brother money every month to help pay for Mom's living expenses. I use Zella, another service offered by my bank. It's free and the money is in my brothers account within 24 hours.

We've had a few checks lost, lately, totaling over $15,000. At least the fee isn't more than the check was for... Mail Services Head has spoken with the regional for USPS with no luck,nor interest in them finding a solution. Like others, we've started using UPS to send checks.
One of our board members was talking with the MS AG about issues he's had in his farming business. It is an election cycle, so if it doesn't help her campaign, it likely won't get any traction. Sad state of affairs we are in.

Fun fact: when you do “online bill pay” through your bank, they literally MAIL A PHYSICAL CHECK to that company. I was astonished to hear this. Figured it was all electronic. It ain’t.

That is just an extension of how banks hold money for as long as possible to squeeze every penny of interest out of a transaction they can. If a million dollar check can sit at a bank for just one extra day, that bank can get one extra day of interest money on that million for doing nothing. If they do that hundreds of times everyday, that little bit of interest adds up.

My company has been thru all of this, couldn't get a check thru ATL post office without getting washed. My accountant recommended using treasury navigator thru SouthState bank. We pay handsomely for it but now we can ach checks both domestically and internationally. Any checks or transactions sit in a que and have to be approved manually. Its working for us. A bonus is the principal interest pays for the service with the best rates available.