Our CSRs had a customer come in today that wanted to open a checking account with checks starting at 501. He was from out-of-state and they had been told that a new customer from out-of-state could not have checks starting with anything other than 101. The customer questioned this and so they came to me. I have never heard of such a rule. It seems to me this falls under the old adage "this is how its always been." Have any of you ever heard of a regulation that states customers from out-of-state that are new to the bank can only have checks starting at 101?

You may have to check State law, as I remember it use to be a requirement in at least one state and there also use to be a requirement that date the account opened had to be printed on the checks in one state - but it has been a long time since I conducted the research.

There is no such federal requirement, but Illinois has one under state law and it may be so in other states.

Why would you want to provide a NEW customer with checks starting higher than 101? I'm speaking from a security perspective here. For the record, I've never heard of such a law/requirement.

In this day of checks by mail, is this really an issue any longer? Could the customer simply take his 101 check and order checks with higher numbers from one of the mail order check companies? (Sincere question, I really don't know.)

of course, the customer could also come in and order 1000 checks with his first order, and throw the first 500 in the trash. I've seen customers do this as well. Other than small mom and pop stores, I don't know that anyone really pays attention to the check number any more.

And with the age of electronic banking, my 21 year old son has had a checking acount for almost 4 years, and is on check 114. He does almost everything via debit card or ACH.

Happy - my son does the same thing. He calls it his debit account.

I think I've seen this thread before...

It's been a while since I ordered checks. The ones I write aren't Y2K compliant since they the year field is preprinted with 19__