Order Personal Checks Direct To Eliminate The Middleman
Although personal checks can be purchased online inexpensively, that was not always the case. Throughout time, the need to transfer wealth safely evolved to what it is today. It had its start thousands of years ago.
A check is an order for the transfer of money. A cheque (spelled check in American English) is a negotiable instrument instructing a financial institution to pay a specific amount of a specific currency from a specified demand account held in the maker/depositor’s name with that institution. Both the maker and payee may be natural persons or legal entities.
Written checks have a long history dating back to the early Roman days. As early as 1 BC the need to eliminate the need to carry around cash and safely trade using checks started to gain popularity. Checks since then have been used as preferred instruments of trade.
Carrying money around to do business could be very risky for an ancient merchant. Any draft or bill of exchange which could later be redeemed and payment guaranteed at a later time was a safer way to do business.
The important parts of a check are: 1. signature identification of the drawer 2. currency amount 3. payee 4. date of issue 5. place of issue 6. check number ID and 7. routing number.
Routing / account numbers are in MICR format. It is a 9 digit number. The first 4 numbers identify the Federal Reserve Bank processing center.
This is followed by digits 5 through 8, identifying the specific bank served by that check -processing center. Digit 9 is a identification verification digit, computed using a complex algorithm of the previous 8 digits. The account number is assigned independently by the various banks.
Routing numbers, also known as transit numbers, consist of denominators and hyphenated numerators. They are in part an ABA indicator number that points to a city code for identification.
Today, when you need to order personal checks, most purchase them from banking institutions as well as online. Online checks can be purchased direct from the check printer thereby saving about 50%. The reduced cost is the result of cutting out the financial institution middleman.
Before you order checks online, there are a number of excellent discount checks covering a wide variety of categories that lend themselves to giving your bank checks a nice personal touch when you reorder.
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