Is it safe to accept money in the mail?
On your end of the deal, the biggest risk is probably counterfeiting. That said, I'd think that most of the downside would be for the buyer since they would have no way to prove that they paid you.  Perhaps a better alternative is to send the items COD (Collect On Delivery aka Cash on Delivery). The USPS and some other carriers offer this service, which can be an effective way to remotely negotiate a cash sale. I double checked the USPS site and they do accept cash for COD deliveries: Recipient may pay by cash or check (or money order) made out to   sender. (Sender may not specify payment method.) You might want to double check this if you go with USPS or FedX. "Another option is to set up an accoutn with Western Union Bill Payment Solutions, where your customer could go to one of their locations and pay in cash and then the cash is transferred to your account. See ""Walk in Cash Payments"" on their site." The US Postal Service to my recollection recommends only mailing cash or items with cash-like characteristics using Registered Mail service. Registered mail is expensive and a pain in the butt for everyone, as it requires an audit trail for each individual who touches the mailing.  If you're doing a lot of business and word gets out that you're accepting cash payments via the mail, you'll probably attract unwanted attention from the tax authorities as well. It's fairly unusual.
Definitely push for a check, they may not do anything nefarious with your credit card number however someone else may be able to read the email before it gets to its final destination. It's never safe to give out credit card number in a less than secure interface. Also, if this is a well known company, then the person interacting with you should know better than to ask for your information through email. Age old rules about money scams: If a person A wants to send money to person B, they do the following: Person A sends money to person B. Neither of them sends money to you, and you don't send money to either of them. It doesn't make sense! If you give someone money, be prepared that you might not receive that money back. If someone gives you money, be prepared that they can get that money back. Illegal money laundering can put you in jail, even if you pretend to be a blameless victim of a scammer. Yes, those numbers are all that is needed to withdraw funds, or at least set online payment of bills which you don't owe. Donald Knuth also faced this problem, leading him to cease sending checks as payment for finding errors in his writings. I think cash, travelers checks (little iffy about this one: they're legal tender cash equivalents), and money orders are the only ones that you'd be a little weird to not accept. You certainly don't have to accept regular checks, credit cards, or barter. In the end though, you don't HAVE to accept anything. Accept only small bills, accept only checks from certain banks, accept only the diners card.  Your sale, your rules. In addition to there being no real guarantee on the guarantee page, note that the domain was registered on May 27, 2013, so there's no substantial track record of reliability. Finally, their Terms of Service explicitly note that they are not liable for loss of funds due to system malfunction, unauthorized access, etc. etc. Perfect Money is going out of their way to ensure they are offering no guarantees and will not be liable for any losses. How safe are your funds? You should not consider your funds to be safe if stored there. There's no guarantee you'll lose your funds, but no significant reason to believe you won't. Additionally, Perfect Money shut down access to all U.S. citizens on July 1st, 2013 with only two weeks of notice. Anyone who did not withdraw their money within this time lost access to it. Ask your bank or credit union. Mine will let me issue recurring payments to anyone, electronically if they can, if not a check gets mailed and (I presume) I get billed for the postage. There's no requirement to use these OTP systems to process Internet transactions. Some merchants are using them, some are not. PayPal does not since they are not the receiver of the money but rather a merchant processor - so they don't assume any risk anyway and wouldn't bother. "value slip below vs ""equal a bank savings account’s safety"" There is no conflict.  The first author states that money market funds may lose value, precisely due to duration risk.  The second author states that money market funds is as safe as a bank account.  Safety (in the sense of a bond/loan/credit) mostly about default risk. For example, people can say that ""a 30-year U.S. Treasury Bond is safe"" because the United States ""cannot default"" (as said in the Constitution/Amendments) and the S&P/Moody's credit rating is the top/special. Safety is about whether it can default, ex. experience a -100% return.  Safety does not directly imply Riskiness. In the example of T-Bond, it is ultra safe, but it is also ultra risky. The volatility of 30-year T-Bond could be higher than S&P 500.  Back to Money Market Funds.  A Money Market Fund could hold deposits with a dozen of banks, or hold short term investment grade debt. Those instruments are safe as in there is minimal risk of default. But they do carry duration risk, because the average duration of the instrument the fund holds is not 0.  A money market fund must maintain a weighted average maturity (WAM) of 60 days or less and not invest more than 5% in any one issuer, except for government securities and repurchase agreements.  If you have $10,000,000, a Money Market Fund is definitely safer than a savings account.  1 Savings Account at one institution with amount exceeding CDIC/FDIC terms is less safe than a Money Market Fund (which holds instruments issued by 20 different Banks).  Duration Risk Your Savings account doesn't lose money as a result of interest rate change because the rate is set by the bank daily and accumulated daily (though paid monthly).  The pricing of short term bond is based on market expectation of the interest rates in the future. The most likely cause of Money Market Funds losing money is unexpected change in expectation of future interest rates.  The drawdown (max loss) is usually limited in terms of percentage and time through examining historical returns.  The rule of thumb is that if your hold a fund for 6 months, and that fund has a weighted average time to maturity of 6 months, you might lose money during the 6 months, but you are unlikely to lose money at the end of 6 months. This is not a definitive fact.  Using GSY, MINT, and SHV as an example or short duration funds, the maximum loss in the past 3 years is 0.4%, and they always recover to the previous peak within 3 months. GSY had 1.3% per year return, somewhat similar to Savings accounts in the US." "Firstly, it isn't so generous.  It is a win-win, but the bank doesn't have to mail me a free box of checks with my new account, or offer free printing to compete for my business.  They already have the infrastructure to send out checks, so the actual cost for my bank to mail a check on my behalf is pretty minimal.  It might even save them some cost and reduce exposure.  All the better if they don't actually mail a check at all. Per my bank Individuals and most companies you pay using Send Money will be mailed   a paper check. Your check is guaranteed to arrive by the delivery date   you choose when you create the payment. ... A select number of companies–very large corporations such as telecoms,   utilities, and cable companies–are part of our electronic biller   network and will be paid electronically. These payments arrive within   two business days... So the answer to your question depend on what kind of bill pay you used.  If it was an electronic payment, there isn't a realistic possibility the money isn't cashed. If your bank did mail a paper check, the same rules would apply as if you did it yourself.  (I suppose it would be up to the bank.  When I checked with my bank's support this was their answer.) Therefore per this answer: Do personal checks expire? [US] It is really up to your bank whether or not they allow the check to be cashed at a later date.  If you feel the check isn't cashed quickly enough, you would have to stop payment and contact whoever you were trying to pay and perhaps start again.  (Or ask them to hustle and cash the check before you stop it.) Finally, I would bet a dime that your bank doesn't ""pre-fund"" your checks.  They are just putting a hold on the equivalent money in your account so you don't overdraw.  That is the real favor they do for you.  If you stopped the check, your money would be unfrozen and available. EDIT Please read the comment about me losing a dime; seems credible." My brother is worried as in US a transaction of more than 10K can be flagged by IRS. Transactions may be flagged to IRS or any other regulators as required. If the intent is correct, there is nothing wrong, your Brother would have to establish that it was for legit reason. Will it be safe to transfer through wire to wire Transfer or is there any other alternatives All legit transfer mechanism would have the same reporting regulation. There is no one better than other method. As stated earlier, if the purpose is bonafide, there shouldn't be anything to worry about. In addition to filling out the USPS custom forms, you will have to consider what the Brazilians allow for mailing into the country: Amusing that the items you are mailing are not on the prohibited list. The list ranges from money and weapons. to Playing cards and Primary educational books not written in Portuguese.  You still have to be careful.  Observations   Which means that you will have fill out the form, they will have to fill out forms, and they will pay the import duty when they pick it up at the pot office. Unless they were aking you to not declare the contents and value correctly. Basically, any time someone claims they put money into your bank account, or send you a check, or something similar, and then asks you to send money to someone else, it is a scam. What you need to do: 1. Under no circumstances whatsoever must you ever send money to anyone. 2. Talk to your bank and ask them for advice.  The money that gets put into your bank account isn't real. It has been paid with a forged check, or a stolen credit card number, or a hacked or faked bank account. Your bank will figure this out eventually, and then they will take that money away. It may take many weeks, but the money will disappear.  Meanwhile, any money that you send to someone is real. It's your money. When you send it, it is gone. Your bank will hold you to that.  So in your case if they say they pay you $6,000 for a job, but put $10,000 into your bank account and ask you to pass $4,000 on to someone, the $4,000 you pay comes out of your bank account, a long time later the $10,000 comes out of your bank account, and you owe the bank $4,000. Plus sometimes the job involves real work that obviously doesn't pay.  An alternative is that this is money laundering, in which case you would become a criminal by being involved. Well, sure, why else would you buy them? Is it illegal now to accept money *from* PDVSA? Because I know my company does business with them, and if we are going to ship what we built for them, we need to see the money. At every moving/yard/garage sale I have ever seen only cash is accepted. While the use of electronic payments is growing the big problem is that it is hard to verify the exchange at the time the goods are changing hands. Unless you have a card reader attached to your phone, you can't use a credit or debit card. Unless you can verify that they did transfer the money electronically why would you let them walk away with your stuff? If you knew them you could accept a check, but there are risks with the checks bouncing. This does sound a bit implausible, even if it is true it is pretty grossly irresponsible and you probably shouldn't just let it slide... However there is no real benefit in wading in with accusations, I suspect that the most likely scenario is that your tenet simply didn't have the money and was looking for a way to delay payment. This may well not be particularly malicious towards you, they may just be unable to pay and need a bit of room to maneuver.  In this case the wise thing is to challenge them but without forcing them to admit that they might have lied, perhaps by suggesting that they might have been mistaken about dropping off the money but it's no big deal and negotiate a resolution. In these situations where it is one persons word against another giving them the opportunity to save face often pays off.  Equally you want to make it absolutely clear that putting a wad of cash in your mailbox is not an acceptable way to pay.