Restricting a check from being deposited via cell phone
No, most check deposits are processed that way. Banks transmit the pictures of the checks between themselves, and allow business customers to deposit scans for quite some time now. I see no reason for you to be concerned of a check being in a dusty drawer, it's been deposited, cannot be deposited again. If you're concerned of forgery - well, nothing new there. I agree with you that smartphone deposits make you more vulnerable to a variety of issues. Checks are completely insecure, since anyone with your routing/account number can create a check, and individuals are less likely to shred or otherwise secure the check properly. Ways to control this risk are: I don't see any reason to worry about a check being deposited via cell phone. There isn't anything you can write on a check to make it physical deposit only or similar.  If you really want to keep your check from being read electronically you could always smudge the numbers but you run the risk of the bank not cashing it and possibly getting a return check fee.
"A check is simply an order to the bank to pay money to someone. The payor's signature on the front of the check is all that's needed to make that order binding. If you read the check carefully, you'll see that it says ""Pay to the order of ...""; that's the payor's instruction to the bank, and as payee you can make a further order, to pay the money to someone else, in which case you'd have to endorse the check to make your order binding. But nobody does that any more; instead, people always just deposit checks into their accounts. When you deposit a check, the payor's signature is all that's needed to tell the payor's bank that it should pay the money. If your bank insists on a signature as well, that's just to pretend that they're paying attention in case it turns out that you stole the check. In reality, banks don't pay attention to signatures, nor to the name of the payee. I once put the wrong check into an envelope, and the phone company got a check for something over $700 on a bill of less than $50, payable to some completely different company; they deposited it and gave me a credit for the balance; none of the banks in the transition chain questioned it." "It sounds like you are isolated and in a small town.  Without the true ability to bank, perhaps you should move. As an alternative you could do some kind of online banking.  Most banks offer the ability to deposit via mobile phone and you could obtain cash by using remote ATMs or writing checks for an amount over your purchase at the grocery store.  How are you paid?  If via direct deposit, that makes mobile banking even easier.   Did your read your premise out loud?  Using Game Stop as a bank is just silly. Are you banned from banks because of not paying child support or some other legal obligation?  If so just ""face the music"".  I know people that are over 40 and owed a relatively small amount of child support and the result of they lost out on order of magnitudes greater income.  It was just a short-sighted move that cost them far more than if they just obeyed the court order. It would be smarter to use a check cashing store, like AmScott, to do your banking.  They will cash checks for a fee, issue money orders, or even allow you to pay some bills directly through them.  Never, ever use them to cash a hot check or for short term financing but using them or Walmart, or the Grocery store is a much better option than Game Stop." "What I've found works best when working on my personal budget is to track my income and spending two different ways: bank accounts and budget categories. Here is what I mean: When I deposit my paycheck, I do two things with it: It goes into my checking account, so the balance of my checking account goes up by the amount of my paycheck. I also ""deposit"" the money from my checking account into my various budget category balances.  This is separate from my bank account balances.  Some of my paycheck money goes into my groceries category, some goes into clothing, some into car fuel, entertainment, mortgage, phone, etc.  Some goes into longer range bills that only happen once or twice a year, such as car insurance, life insurance, property tax, etc.  Some goes into savings goals of ours, such as car replacement, vacation, furniture, etc. Every dollar that we have in a bank account or in cash in our wallets is also accounted for in a budget category.  If you add up the balances of our bank accounts and cash, and you add up the balances of our budget categories, they add up to the same number. When we make a purchase, this also gets accounted for twice: The appropriate bank account (or cash wallet) balance gets reduced by the purchase amount. The appropriate budget category gets reduced by the purchase amount. In this way, we don't really need to worry about having separate bank accounts for different purposes.  We don't need to put our savings goal money in a separate bank account from our grocery money, if we don't want to.  The budget category accounting keeps track of how much money is allocated to each purpose.   Now, the budget category amounts are not spent yet; the money in them is still in our bank account, and we can move money around in the categories, if we change our mind on how to allocate them.  For example, if we don't spend all of our gas money for the month, we can either keep that money in the gas category, or we can move it to a different category, such as the car replacement category or the vacation category.  If the phone bill is more than we expect, we can move money around from a different category to cover it. Now, back to your question: We allocate some money from each paycheck into our furniture category.  But the money is not really spent until we actually buy some furniture.  When we do, the furniture category balance and bank account balance both go down by the amount of the purchase. All of this can be kept track of on the computer in a spreadsheet.  However, it's not easy to keep track of so many categories and bank balances.  An easier solution is custom budgeting software designed for this purpose.  I use and recommend YNAB." When you want to pay a bill on line there are several ways to do it. You can give them your credit card details: Name on Card, zip code, credit card number, and 3 or 4 digit security code on the back. Most of the information is available on the card or via an easy Google search. If the crook has your card they can use it to buy something.  You can contact your bank's website and establish a one time or recurring transfer. You provide the information about the person/company. Your bank knows who you are because you used a secure system and your password. Their bank accepts the money because who would refuse money, they don't care who you are. You can provide the company with your bank info (bank number, your account number, and your name). If your bank limits their transactions via this method only to legitimate organizations, then your money will only be sent to legitimate organizations. But if the organization has no way of knowing who is on the other end of the phone or webpage, they may be withdrawing money from a bank account without the account owners permission.  In the example article a person found a charity that had lax security standards, they were recognized by the bank as a legitimate organization, so the bank transferred the money. The charity will point to the form and say they had permission from the owner, but in reality they didn't.  The subject of the article was correct, all the info required is on every check. It is just that most people are honest, and the few security hurdles that exist do stop most of the fraud. "Anyone can walk into a bank, say ""Hi, I'm a messenger, I have an endorsed check and a filled out deposit slip for Joe Blow who has an account here, please deposit this check for him, as he is incapacitated. Straight deposit.""  They'll fiddle on their computer, to see if they can identify the deposit account definitively, and if they can, and the check looks legit, ""thanks for taking care of our customer sir.""  Of course, getting a balance or cashback is out of the question since you are not authenticated as the customer. I have done the same with balance transfer paperwork, in that case the bank knew the customer and the balance transfer was his usual. If the friend does not have an account there, then s/he should maybe open an account at an ""online bank"" that allows deposit by snapping photos on a phone, or phone up a branch, describe her/his situation and see if they have any options.  Alternately, s/he could get a PayPal account.  Or get one of those ""credit card swipe on your phone"" deals like Square or PayPal Here, which have fees very close to nil, normally cards are swiped but you can hand-enter the numbers.   Those are fairly easy to get even if you have troubles with creditworthiness.  S/he would need to return the check to the payer and ask the payer to pay her/him one of those ways.  The payer may not be able to, e.g. if they are a large corporation. A last possibility is if the check is from a large corporation with whom s/he continues to do business with.  For instance, the electric company cashiers out your account after you terminate service at your old location. But then you provision service at a new location and get a new bill, you can send their check right back to them and say ""Please apply this to my new account"". If s/he is unable to get any of those because of more serious problems like being in the country illegally, then, lawful behavior has its privileges, sorry. There are lots of unbanked people, and they pay through the nose for banking services at those ghastly check-cashing places, at least in America.  I don't have a good answer for how to get a check cashed in that situation." Yes, but it's a matter of paper trail and lifestyle. Your $600K guy may get questioned when he makes the deposit, but would show the record of having that money elsewhere. People buy cars with cash (a check) all the time. The guy filing a tax return claiming little to no income or no return at all, is more likely to get flagged than the $100K+ earning couple who happened to be able to save to buy their $25K car every 10 years with cash.  On reading the article, the bank had its own concerns. The guy who was trying to withdraw the money was elderly, and the bank seemed pretty concerned to make sure he wasn't about to be scammed. It may not be spelled out as such, but a custodian of one's money does have an obligation to not be party to a potential scam, and the very request for such a huge sum of money in cash is a red flag. Several options: Banks - ask in the branches near to you if any of them would do that. They generally only service their account members, but if you smile and talk nicely to the tellers they might do that for you. It may involve some nominal commission. Check cashing places - they're everywhere, and they carry large denomination bills. They will probably do that, but will likely charge a commission. Money orders - if you don't want to give a personal check, buy a money order at the post office, and dump the cash on them. It costs a nominal fee ($1.60 at USPS). In my experience, you don't need to endorse a check with a signature to deposit it into your account.  You do if you are exchanging the check for cash.  Businesses usually have a stamp with their account number on them.  Once stamped, those checks are only able to be deposited into that account.  Individuals can do the same.   I have had issues depositing insurance and government checks in the past that had both my and my wife's name on them.  Both of us had to endorse the check to be able to deposit them.  I think this was some kind of fraud prevention scheme, so that later one of us couldn't claim they didn't know anything about the check.