Is it OK to certify a bank official check for a customer?

Isnt this unnecessary?

If you certify a check, arent you representing that the check is now an obligation of the bank on which it is drawn? How is this different from a check issued by a bank and drawn on itself?

Are you referring to a check drawn by a bank on its account with another bank? In this case, I dont think it would be unnecessary and it could be certified if the bank on which the check wqas drawn was willing to subsitutue ist immediate liability on the check and give up any right to issue a stop payment.

The difference is that the funds are certified (as good as cash). A bank official check is not as good as cash it could be returned. If a customer requests to certify one, we would debit the bank official account and then certify it.

Certified checks may be perceived as being as good as cash, but they clearly are not. They need to be collected, they can be stolen or lost (so can cash), they can be altered, etc. All of the same can be said of an "official check."

A cashier's check cannot be returned except for forged endorsements or under the rules in the UCC for lost/stolen/destroyed official checks. But the same can be said of certified checks.

There is precious little to be said about certified checks that cannot be said about an official check.

Why do you even offer a "Certified Check" service? It is labort intensive and costly service to provide and as pointed out above, a Bank Official Check is just as good.

One advantage is that the payee of the customer's check can present it to the drawee bank and obtain the certification. In effect, the payee buys an upgrade from the drawer's obligation to the bank's obligation by paying a certification fee.

That may be true for some banks, but a bank is never under an obligation to certify a check, and most banks I know would not certify for anyone other than the drawer.

Why? Perhaps because the drawer is the bank's customer, and the drawer could be inconvenienced by a certification. For instance, the drawer may lose float, and may have to take extra steps to retrieve the paid check once it finally clears the bank's certified check account.

There really isn't a need to certify a bank official check. And I'm assuming that "bank offical check" means something like a cashiers check or money order.

A certified check is a check drawn on a customer's account upon the face of which the bank has stamped "certified" with the date and signature of a bank official. This certifies that the monies are, indeed, collected funds. The monies should be transferred from the customer's account to a separate liability account of the bank, with the check becoming the direct liability of the bank. Otherwise, as we all know, just because someone writes us a personal check doesn't mean the money they wish to give us is actually collected and in the bank at the time we receive the check. It is illegal for a bank to certify a check without collected funds actually on deposit at the time of the certification.

Official checks, on the other hand, are instruments of the bank drawn on itself. Customers may purchase these, such as a cashier's check, with collected funds. They are used to increase the negotiability in commercial transactions by substituting the name and credit of the bank for that of a lesser known party. Anyone receiving a cashier's check or bank money order is assured that the funds are collected, absent some fraud.

So, certifying a bank offical check is kind of redundant. AR.