Foreign currency cheques...

HallwoodMan

To-date I've been paid by a company I work for in the US by cheque which arrives in the post. This is how they operate. They pay all their contractors this way and won't budge. I have to take the cheque to an actual branch of Barclays, which are few and far between these days so it's quite a long drive for me. The last time I did this I was informed that Barclays will stop accepting foreign currency checks from 25th January 2024. They suggested (but were unsure) that this was the same for all banks. When I got home I fired up a chat with Barclays support who confirmed the same.

I'm trying to get the company that pays me to switch to electronic transfer (the US banking system is so far behind UK!). My boss is sympathetic and has asked me to send him something from the internet that will arm him for a visit to his finance department. However, I can find absolutely NOTHING from searches to suggest that foreign currency cheques are no longer being accepted by Barclays or the entire UK banking system. The Barclays website still shows the old process of how to pay in a foreign currency cheque.

Does anyone have any experience of this themselves, and does anyone know of anything reported in the press/online, or of new regulations that have been published that could prove that what I'm telling the company is true. Many thanks. 

marcia_

HSBC still accepts foreign cheques. I get AU$ cheques all the time and bank them for a fee of £25 

DullGreyGuy

The whole UK banking system isn't stopping accepting foreign cheques, it's just getting much rarer to find personal accounts that do accept them. It's more common for business accounts to still accept them. 

You may find them more amenable if you were to use something like Wise which would allow them to use ACH or wire the money to a us routing and account number. Just be aware that Wise isn't a bank and as such FSCS protections don't exist if they were to go bust whilst processing the payment. 

sausage_time

I have US brokerage accounts with Schwab and ETrade - both allow US$ checks to be banked via the app.  Both accounts were opened through employee share schemes, but while no longer employed by them I still have the accounts and I know of others who have opened accounts.  I have no idea of the requirements, but might be worth investigating.

HallwoodMan

DullGreyGuy said:

You may find them more amenable if you were to use something like Wise which would allow them to use ACH or wire the money to a us routing and account number. Just be aware that Wise isn't a bank and as such FSCS protections don't exist if they were to go bust whilst processing the payment. 

Thanks, yes I did this last year when I first started working for them thinking that an electronic transfer into something that looks exactly like a US checking account to them would be acceptable. Nope... all contractors get paid by cheque. They have offered me the option of credit card. This I need to investigate further.

gt94sss2

@HallwoodMan

You can pay foreign currency cheques at HSBC.

In particular, you may want to consider opening a free  HSBC Currency Account (https://www.hsbc.co.uk/international/currency-account/ )

You can then transfer the USD to a HSBC Global Money Account to convert it to GBP at favourable exchange rates 

https://www.hsbc.co.uk/current-accounts/products/global-money/

@marcia_ You can do the same with Australian cheques.

jon3

HSBC is ceasing to accept foreign cheques  as of December 2025. Even though I have a  Canadian Dollar Currency account with them :-(
I have a Canadian pension fund and the company 'SunLife' , although being a major and seemingly professional outfit,  is not able (or not allowed by canada law?) to send payments from these funds electronically !!

Does anyone know of a way to deposit physical CAD cheques in UK ?

wmb194

jon3 said:

HSBC is ceasing to accept foreign cheques  as of December 2025. Even though I have a  Canadian Dollar Currency account with them :-(
I have a Canadian pension fund and the company 'SunLife' , although being a major and seemingly professional outfit,  is not able (or not allowed by canada law?) to send payments from these funds electronically !!

Does anyone know of a way to deposit physical CAD cheques in UK ?

It’s 2025, it must be able to send payments electronically if it wants to.

Sometimes the problem is sending money internationally; have you looked at a CAD account with Wise? It’ll provide a local Canadian account number which Sun Life ought to be able to understand.

https://wise.com/gb/account/cad-account

gt94sss2

It looks like all the main banks have stopped or are stopping accepting foreign currency cheques - with HSBC being one of the last..

If Sun Life can't pay you electronically direct to the UK, can they pay electronically to a Canadian bank account or a Wise one with local Canadian banking details..

jon3

Thank You for your suggestions - I  was hopeful about WISE - I tried to open a Canada based CAD account but it only wants to accept payment from a Canadian Bank to open it, I tried debit & and credit cards - all failed . 
Hoping to find a way to talk to them (difficult !!) to find out if its feasible.... not holding my breath !!

gt94sss2

Assuming you are based in the UK, you would need to open a GBP account first, before creating account details in CAD.