Why Is There A Delay On Check Payments?

Customers will typically encounter a delay on their check payments during the check clearance period. Upon receipt of your check, we require a mandatory 3-5 day processing period to determine whether a check bounces or not. Regrettably, we do receive counterfeit cashier’s checks and money orders and we require this time frame to screen out any incidents of fraud. Apart from ensuring that each check has the proper funds, this process enables us to verify whether or not the customer actually authorized this payment, consequently protecting our customers and their checking accounts from any acts of identity theft.

Please note that while a customer’s bank statements may reflect an immediate payment withdrawal, it is not indicative of a shorter clearance time. JM Bullion does not receive any check clearance notifications, as this is not a standard bank service. Banks simply do not have the time to notify every individual business of their incoming payment statuses due to the sheer volumes of checks that they must process. Similarly, checking the clearance date of every single check and modifying the processing period accordingly would prove impossible since we receive thousands of payments a week. As a result, the most advantageous option for processing paper checks is to wait out the clearing period regardless of how quickly the actual check payment clears.

Another potential cause of delay on check payments is the time it takes for us to receive your check. Fortunately, this length of time is under the customer’s control. After customers receive the email with our mailing address, they have 10 business days to make sure we receive this payment. Given the standard pace of the postal service, we must strongly advise customers to mail their paper check payments within 2 days of placing their orders. Any orders that are not paid within this time frame will be canceled and subject to any cancellation fees/market losses incurred by their purchase.

In some cases, delays on check payments can be attributed to slow postal service. If you have provided swift payment, but it has not reached us within the allotted 10 days, we will require tracking of said payment to verify the whereabouts of your check. This will also enable us to override the cancellation of your order. It is for this reason that we strongly advise our customers to request tracking or delivery on all mailed checks.