Cashing Cheques in the US with a Canadian bank account

[kelapstick]

Just a note on my experiences here, if your cheque comes from Canada the bank (at least our Wells Fargo) may put up to a 14 day hold on it, provided it is not your paycheque. My paycheques do come from Canada (in US funds, but do not actually say "payroll" on them) and I had to struggle to get the bank to wave the hold on it.

If you are dealing with a bank in the US you may want to deal with one that has a Canadian counterpart (like Bank of America owns MBNA, they might be a little more versed in cross-border banking. Although it just might be my location, I think I am the first Canadian most of the people around here have ever seen with the exception of Strange Brew.)

We have no trouble sending cheques from here to our Canadian bank, we send a US funds cheque from our US bank directly to the branch manager at our Canadian bank (we jointly decided that it was the easiest method for both us and the bank). The manager deposits the cheque and money is in the account and available that day. I don't think that I have tried to cash a Canadian funds cheque here though, I think we would just confuse people.

[agnelson]

Yup. Exactly my experience. Cdn cheque to US bank? Bad idea.
US check mailed to Cdnbank (unendorsed, for deposit only) no problem.

[truckerlove]

I regularly write a Canadian cheque and deposit it to my US bank account ... I've never had an issue. They calculate the exchange immediately, write the USD amount on the cheque, put the funds in my US account and it takes about a week to come out of my Canadian account. Since I had been getting paid in Canadian funds but living in the US, it was the only way to get the money into my US account without the unreal fees that were charged to draw from an ATM.