With your Relay checking account1, you can send payments directly from your dashboard to a payee. In order to send a check payment, you must first add a payee for the individual or business you are looking to pay.
If you would rather take advantage of physical third-party checks, you'll have to order a checkbook through a third-party vendor, as Relay does not currently provide checkbooks to our customers directly. For more information on this, please see Ordering a third-party checkbook.
For instructions on how to deposit a check into your Relay account, please see Depositing a Check.
How to send a check payment
- Sign in to your Relay account
- Navigate to the Payments tab.
- Click Mail a Check on the Payments Dashboard.
In Recipient (vendor), select an existing payee, or click + to add a new payee.
Choose the account you want to pay from.
Enter the Amount.
Click Next Step.
If you haven’t entered the payee’s payment information, enter their details.
Optional: Set a scheduled payment date or set it up as a recurring payment.
Add a Payment note/memo.
Click Next step.
Review the payment details.
Click Pay.
- You can keep updated on the check's timeline by selecting the payment on your Home page and viewing the panel that appears on the right-hand side.
- Sign in to your Relay account using the mobile app
- Select the Payments tab
- Press Send Payment
- Select a recipient from the list of payee's shown
- Enter the payment Amount
- Select the Source Account for the payment. Please note that the funds will not be deducted from the account balance until the check is deposited by the payee.
- Select Check as the payment method
- Enter the reason for payment (this will appear on the memo line of the check, up to 40 characters).
- Once you have confirmed the payment details press Pay
- You can keep updated on the check's timeline by selecting the payment on your Home page and viewing the pop-up panel.
Limits, processing timeline, and fees
All accounts have limits on how much you can send by check per day and month. For more information on how to view your account limits please see Viewing your account limits.
Once the check payment has been created following the steps outlined above, the check is mailed out to the payee on the next business day. It takes about 8-10 business days for the check to arrive once mailed out.
There are no fees associated with sending check payments within the Relay dashboard.
Initiating a Bill Payment through your account's Check Payment Flow
You can take advantage of Relay's Bill Pay feature directly from your account's Mail a Check Payment window! To upload, pay a bill via Check Payment, and migrate a bill directly into the Bill Pay section of your account, simply follow the below steps:
- Sign in to your Relay account.
- Click on Payments and select your desired payment method.
- Upload the bill file (PDF, image, or document). under the Have a bill handy? field.
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Relay will auto-extract key information:
- Vendor name
- Invoice number
- Line Items and Amount
- Invoice Date and Due date
- Review or edit the extracted fields and complete the Memo field.
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Optional: Add accounting categorization (available for all plans)
- Line Item Categorization (available in Grow & Scale).
- Click Next Step.
- Verify again the payment method, payee details, and payment date and select Next Step and Pay.
- Your payment will be initiated and the bill will also migrate into your account's Bills section.
For more information, please see Getting Started with Bill Pay in Relay and Creating and Uploading Bills in Relay.
Can I send checks outside of the U.S.?
No, checks can only be mailed to an address located within the U.S. at this time.
How do I know if the check was deposited by the payee?
The check will have a "Check Initiated” status once created, which will be updated to "Check Mailed" once it has been printed and is in-transit to the recipient.
A “Settled” status means the check has been successfully deposited by the payee. Check payments only appear on Xero/QuickBooks Online bank feeds when they have “Settled”.
Please note: If a suite or apartment number is not added to the payee details, but is a necessity for the receiving address, the check may not arrive. If this happens, the check will need to be re-sent with the updated address details.
Can I cancel an outgoing check payment?
A stop payment can be placed on the check if it needs to be cancelled or if it does not arrive in the mail to the payee. Instructions on how to cancel a check payment can be found here: Canceling a check payment.
1 You can only send check payments from a Relay checking account. If you would like to move funds out of your savings account, you must first create an internal transfer in Relay between your savings and checking account.