Do any of your financial institutions charge a check-cashing fee to non-customers cashing on-us checks at your bank? If so, what are your parameters? Do you charge a flat fee or a % of the check? How do you present this to your commercial customers who have employees who cash payroll checks at your branches?
Just curious. Seems like a good way to earn fee income, but I wasn't sure about the particulars.
Thanks
BC

You were nice enough to reply to my question, so I'll reply to your question.

We do not charge non-customers to cash on-us checks.

We do not charge non-customer to cash checks on-us. It does sound like a good way to produce income, but I think it might hurt your customer relations with your customers which in turn could cost you money in other areas.

We don't charge non-customers to cash on-us checks either.

We never did for fear it would upset our customer.

Guy mows lawn for our customer. Guy gets a check for $40 and has no account. Goes all the way to our branch to cash the check. He gets $35 due to a $5 fee. Guy goes to customer a few weeks later to mow the yard. Tells them it now cost $45. Customer gets upset with us.

Andy,
I have seen some bank's policies that state that a fee is only charged on check amounts over $100 or only on commercial checks. I agree with the concerns you have stated; that has been the reason we have never implemented such a fee. However, it has come up again, and I just wanted to be sure, among other things, that it was legal for a bank to charge a fee on items drawn on it. That is why I was wondering how other FI's are handling this. I know Citi, BofA and some of the larger banks charge fees, but most of us smaller guys don't. Why is that?
BC

Customer service I assume. The smaller community bank tries to feel more in touch with their customer.

There was an attempt to prohibit this kind of activity in Texas, but banks went to court and won. This was an attempt to regulate the free market place. Some details are here.

We do not charge the casher to cash an on-us check; however, we do have a handling fee for commercial customers for whom we must cash a lot of their checks. This would apply to certain businesses where we have 20 or more employees every payday standing in line to cash a check. We have also encouraged these businesses to go to direct deposit.

We don't charge for cashing on us checks either but we do charge 8.00 for non customers cashing checks not drawn on us from local business that we know would be good for it. We have several large manufacturing plants that don't bank with us but we still cash their checks as any goodcommunity bank would. We also get their thumbprint.

We don't charge for cashing on us checks. That should be a part of the service for the customer having and account with us. We will cash there check that they give for a good or service. I think it would be grossly wrong to charge at customer for that...

In some larger Metropolitan area even smaller, community type banks charge that fee. One bank I worked for in a suburb of Chicago would only cash a payroll check from a non customer if we had an indemnity agreement signed from the business, stating that if we get ID, we are free from any fraud claims down the line. Even in that case, we still charged a fee to cash the checks. Not saying its right or wrong, but it does take time and to some extent a certain amount of exposure by cashing those checks.

We do not charge a fee for cashing checks on us. When Bank of Amercia started charging to cash checks drawn on them, we had a field day. We were able to solicit several large employers in our community who were mad about the new policy.

If many of the checks are coming from large employers who are your customer, talk to them about setting up a booth at their place of business and opening accounts for their employees on site. We have done many of these presentations at employee meetings combining financial advice along with a pitch for new accounts. You can also help the employer by pitching direct deposit. Even if they won't let you come on site, they might distribute a flyer that you could make that says "Special Benefits for Acme Cheese Employees" or whatever.

We usually provide refreshments and a gift if they open the account while we are there. (They come in the bank to sign the paperwork later or we take it back out there the next day.)