Is it possible for an individual to refuse a cheque in France?
In any country, individuals (and shops) can reject any form of payment that is not Legal Tender - defined by law as a payment form that must be accepted. Shops are typically more generous, because they want to do business with you, but individuals are in a different position. In France, only official coins and bills are declared as Legal Tender (so if they don't want to, individuals don't even need to accept bank transfers). This is for doubts you need to pay. In addition, as you are not forced to do business with them, people and shops can require whatever they feel like to require - if you want to buy their car, they can ask you to stand on your head and spit coins, and if you don't like it, they don't sell to you. (They won't do much business then, probably)
Before starting with investing, you should make sure you are saving enough.  Living in a welfare country (France) does not exempt you from potentially needing to save large amounts of money. You state that you do not need much of an emergency day fund, but this is not true.  Being dismissed unjustly from your job is not the only way to become unemployed and not all roads lead to unemployment pay.  Being fired for cause or leaving your job voluntarily are two work related causes that will leave you without an income source.  Unexpected major expenses are another reason you might need to dip into your emergency fund. If your emergency fund is in order, the next thing to investigate is your pension and saving for retirement.  In a country with a strong pension system, you need to check how comfortable you are with its sustainability (Greece anyone?) and also whether it will adequately meet your needs.  If not, there are no 401ks or IRAs in France, but there is a relatively new personal supplementary pension plan (PERP) that you might investigate contributing to. If you're comfortable with your emergency fund and your retirement savings, then preparing for buying a house is likely your next savings goal.  A quick search shows that to get a mortgage to buy a house in France, banks will commonly require a downpayment of 20% plus various closing costs.  See for example here.  This is 40,000+ euro for a 200k euro house, which will take you several years at the rate of 500 euro / month.  France has special plans (Plan d’Epargne Logement) with tax-exempt interest for saving up for a house that you might want to investigate. In your other question, you also ask about buying a cheap car.  As you get older and possibly start a family, having a car will likely become more of a necessity.  This is another goal you can save for rather than having to take a loan out when you buy one. Just have the associate sign the back and then deposit it.  It's called a third party cheque and is perfectly legal.  I wouldn't be surprised if it has a longer hold period and, as always, you don't get the money if the cheque doesn't clear. Now, you may have problems if it's a large amount or you're not very well known at the bank.  In that case you can have the associate go to the bank and endorse it in front of the teller with some ID.  You don't even technically have to be there.  Anybody can deposit money to your account if they have the account number. He could also just deposit it in his account and write a cheque to the business. This sounds like a scam. Did they email you out of the blue to offer you this 'job', by any chance, and you'd never heard of them before? That's an incredibly large red flag in and of itself. While I don't know quite what the scam is likely to be, here's how I would suggest it might work: Other variants are possible - say using a cheque rather than PayPal, or having Person A be the scammer as well. But this being a legitimate transaction is very unlikely. Even where national law might allow such a practice, the law in an individual province or state (either for issuing or receiving bank) might not; or if that does then the receiving bank may have its own regulations or compliance practice which may not permit them to accept an altered cheque.  In any case, printed numbers are usually machine-readable, and a corrected cheque would not be.  The question needs a specific answer which addresses the specific circumstances involved (which are not stated, at the time of writing this), but for the general question “Should I alter a printed cheque?” the answer must be no. Cheque numbers are used for identification of the cheque. In many cases, there is no verification of uniqueness and it would be perfectly acceptable simply to use cheques with duplicate numbers: a cheque is merely an order to the bank to make a payment. But you would not be able to identify a particular payment on your statement, and neither would the issuing bank if you wanted one stopped. Where the number is verified as unique, then clearing the payment may be refused or at best delayed in order to be queried. Making an obvious amendment to a cheque’s details is likely to raise a red flag. The receiving bank would not be able to tell if you did it, or the payee; they would not know why. They may suspect that it was done in order to render the cheque unidentifiable [even though the opposite is in fact the case] and refuse to accept it. They may refuse to accept it because it could not be read automatically. Any refusal would sour your relationship with your payees. Presumably your printing house (or your bank, if they printed them) has made the error: raise it with them and have them reprint the batch. Ask your bank what to do with the incorrect cheques: they may want them returned to the bank, or they may be happy for you to keep (and even use) them. If the latter, I suggest you shred them. "Nope, anything is that has the required information is fine.  At a minimum you need to have the routing number, account number, amount, ""pay to"" line and a signature. The only laws are that it can't be written on anything illegal, like human skin, and it has to be portable, not carved on the side of a building ( for example) https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-20434,00.html http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2013/12/people-actually-cash-big-novelty-checks-even-possible/ That said, the MICR line and standard sizes will make things eaiser for they bank, but are hardly required.  You could write your check on notebook paper so long as it had the right information, and the bank would have to ""cash it"". Keep in mind that a check is an order to the bank to give your money to a person and nothing more. You could  write it out in sentence form. ""Give Bill $2 from account 12344221 routing number 123121133111 signed _________"" and it would be valid. In practice though, it would be a fight. Mostly the bank would try to urge you to use a standard check, or could hold the funds because it looks odd, till they received the ok from ""the other bank"". But.... If you rant to fight that fight...." For an individual its not automatic. One needs to ask the Bank, return the check.   For Corporate Customer depending on how big the relationship is, many a times this is given as a service and there is an automatic return I would recommend wire transfer.  I was in your position some years ago, and the US$ cheque took 6 weeks to clear. Wire transfer fees are generally a few tens of pounds, depending on the banks involved. This is either laundering money or laundering non-money.  All the other answers point out how a cheque or bank transfer will take days to actually clear.  That is a red herring! There are lots of ways to illegally transfer real money out of existing accounts.  Stolen cheque books, stolen banking details (partly in connection with stolen smartphones and credit cards) and cards, money transfers from other people duped in a similar manner as you are: it is much easier to steal money than invent it, and it takes quite longer until stolen rather than invented money will blow up at the banks. All of those payments will likely properly clear but not leave you in actual legal possession of money.  People will notice the missing money and notify police and banks and you will be on the hook for paying back all of it. Cheques and transfers from non-existing accounts, in contrast, tend to blow up very fast and thus are less viable for this kind of scam as the time window for operating the scam is rather small. Whether or not the cheque actually clears is about as relevant of whether or not the Rolls Royce you are buying for $500 because the owner has an ingrown toe nail and cannot press down the accelerator any more has four wheels. Better hope for the Rolls to be imaginary because then you'll only be out of $500 and that's the end of it.  If it is real, your trouble is only starting.