Hello Ben, It's actually only half the story. The other half is that US banks won't accept third party cheques in bulk anymore, because they just became liable for up to seven years.
CyFroCA$H actually offered several bank security deposits of up to 50% of the total annual volume, but to no avail. The constantly changing rules, together with plenty of crooks who tried every trick in the book and then some made the business of buying smaller cheques without asking for photo ID first difficult, then illegal and in the end impossible. We do still buy EURo-denominated cheques drawn on EU banks, but costs are high, margins are low and processing times somewhat longish. All that said, look at the funny side of it: When we first started out, we had exact recoreds of all transactions, knew whom it had been made out to, who sent it to us and who withdrew the funds from his or her customer account after the cheque cleared. Sure, we had no positive ID, but a thick paper trail. Guess what? Now that everyone has their customers make cheques out to us we don't have a clue of who they are, what they sold, what the money is for, etc. A while ago I posted here that the morons who came up with the financial transactions part of the new rules had shot off their collective legs with large calibre guns. Nowadays the size of most transactions we process has doubled and trippled - and we don't have a clue who is paying whom for what... On a different note, three years ago a company cheque drawn on an American bank was almost as good as cash in many countries. Banks would credit your account pretty much right away if you presented an American cheque to them. Nowadays you are real lucky if they accept them - processing time ranges from 2-10 weeks and fees are about 1% + $25.00. Nuff said. Cheers, Robert. budget & privacy website hosting http://www.cyberica.net budget & privacy domain registrations http://www.u2planet.com --- You are currently subscribed to e-gold-list as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Use e-gold's Secure Randomized Keyboard (SRK) when accessing your e-gold account(s) via the web and shopping cart interfaces to help thwart keystroke loggers and common viruses.
