Chase bank not breaking large bills for non-account holders
Yes it is (legal). There is of course no law requiring any business you walk in to break your money. What made you think there would be? Being a bank in the US (and in other countries) has some legal consequences, but none of them relates to 'having to do business with anyone that walks in', neither 'having to break bills for people' (not even for established customers). Yes, it was historically commonplace for most banks to do all money-breaking for free, but that does not establish any obligation to do it. Maybe the FED is required to do that, but that won't help you if you don't live near either. First, they don't have an obligation to provide a service for a non-customer.  In theory, the could even refuse this service to account holders if that was their business model, although in practice that would almost surely be too large of a turn-off to be commercially feasible.  Non-account holders aren't paying fees or providing capital to the bank, so the bank really has no incentive or obligation to tie up tellers serving them. Maybe as importantly, they have a legitimate business reason in this case as stated.  The fact that the bill passed whatever test the teller did does not, of course, ensure that the bill is real.  They may (or may not) subject it to additional tests later that might be more conclusive.  Making you have an account helps ensure that, in the event they do test it and it fails, that (a) they know who you are in case the Secret Service wants to find you, and (b) they can recover their losses by debiting your account by the $100.  This isn't foolproof since any number of bad things could still happen (identity theft, closing account before they do additional tests, bill passing later tests, etc.), but it does give them some measure of protection.
“Chase’s tellers do not have the authority to close an account…” That’s a “truthy” bit of bullshit. Yes, a teller themselves do not have the authority to close an account. But if you are the owner of the account and you state to the teller that you would like to withdraw all of your money into a cashier’s check so as to close the account they cannot refuse you. Since they fed you this nonsense, they might play some delaying tactics like calling a manager and having them talk to you tough the window and such. But just stand your ground and state you would like to close the account and withdraw all funds. Now if they were extra slimy and if you were to withdraw all funds but they let the zero balance float for a bit so they could claim a fee on you, bullshit once again. You should take any notice of fees coupled with a dated receipt showing the date you withdrew funds, go to the branch and complain to the manager right away. State clearly you will not pay any fees and you would like written verification that your account is closed. Also—and this goes without saying and is implied above—but be sure to keep copies of all if your receipts and transactions. If they state they want to hold onto something, demand they make a copy. And for your own safety/sanity keep your own backup copies somewhere safe at home. All of that said, I have seen modern consumer bankers really act like a bunch of slimeballs in the past decade or so, but generally this has still been an exception to the rule. The reality is if you do not want to have your money in their bank it’s in their best interest to let go of you as soon as possible; especially if you have a small amount of money such as $1,500 at stake. Remember your rights as a consumer, remember it’s your money and remember—and remind them—that you can report them if they deny you reasonable access to your funds. "This is based on my experience with Chase and may not be applicable to other banks. As you mentioned Chase as one of the banks you do business with hopefully this will be helpful to you. The money does come out of your account immediately. If the check isn't cashed in a certain amount of time, the check expires and you get the money credited back to your account. Once you have made a bill payment online you can check on the status of your check by looking at your payment activity, finding the payment in question, and following the ""proof of payment"" link.   There is will provide you with information on your payment which you can submit to your payee to prove when you submitted the payment, and which they can use to verify with the bank that you really did send the payment as you claimed.  Once the check is cashed, this page will also contain images of the front and back of the cashed check, so you can prove that the recipient really did cash it.  You can see from this info that the check is being funded from a different account number than your own, which is good for security purposes since (per Knuth, 2008) giving someone else your bank routing number and account number as found on your personal checks basically provides them with all they need to (fraudulently, of course) clean out your account." Years ago, I had a tenant who bounced a check now and then. I started going to the bank where his account was. With my ID they were agreeable to cashing the check against his account. The teller first checked his balance and only cashed when there were enough funds. One time he was $10 short. I wrote a deposit slip and added the $10 it took to clear the check.  As they say, your mileage may vary, I hear some banks won't even break a large bill for a non customer. CUs are now starting to adopt some of the bank's tricks, like using a longer float during online bill paying and for outside transfers.  Also for overdrafts they are now starting to kick into fees or automatic loans rather than transferring money from your savings account.  I've been a member for decades and my CUs weren't doing this previously. "The balance sheet for a bank is the list of assets and liabilities that the bank directly is responsible for.  This would be things like loans the bank issues and accounts with the bank. Banks can make both ""balance sheet"" loans, meaning a loan that says on the balance sheet - one the bank gains the profits from but holds the risks for also.  They can also make ""off balance sheet"" loans, meaning they securitize the loan (sell it off, such as the mortgage backed securities). Most major banks, i.e. Chase, Citibank, etc., could be called ""balance sheet"" banks because at least some portion of their lending comes from their balance sheet.  Not 100% by any means, they participate in the security swaps extensively just like everyone does, but they do at least some normal, boring lending just as you would explain a bank to a five year old.  Bank takes in deposits from account holders, loans that money out to people who want to buy homes or start businesses. However, some (particularly smaller) firms don't work this way - they don't take responsibility for the money or the loans.  They instead ""manage assets"" or some similar term. I think of it like the difference between Wal-Mart and a consignment store.  Wal-Mart buys things from its distributors, and sells them, taking the risk (of the item not selling) and the reward (of the profit from selling) to itself.  On the other hand, a consignment store takes on neither: it takes a flat fee to host your items in its store, but takes no risk (you own the items) nor the majority of the profit. In this case, Mischler Financial Group is not a bank per se - they don't have accounts; they manage funds, instead.  Note the following statement on their Services page for example: Mischler Financial Group holds no risk positions and no unwanted inventory of securities, which preserves the integrity of our capital and assures our clients that we will be able to obtain bids and offers for them regardless of adverse market conditions. They're not taking your money and then making their own investments; they're advising you how to invest your money, or they're helping do it for you, but it's your money going out and your risk (and reward)." Hence why I pay bill by bill and don't authorize automatic withdrawals. Are you telling me your online banking and/or utility company don't allow you to make non automatic payments online?  If so I guess thats the answer to OP's question... I actually did this once. I wrote a large check along with a letter indicating that I would not be around to receive the next bill so I was prepaying. Not only did they credit the entire check, they didn't send that bill and listed the charges on the next month's bill. They must have done that by hand because there's no way the machines would have understood. If this matters to you a lot, I agree you should leave. My primary bank account raised chequing account and transaction fees. I left. When I was closing my account the teller asked for the reason (they needed to fill out a form) and I explained it was the monthly fees. Eventually, if a bank gets enough of these, they will change. I want to get back those features for the same price it cost when I opened it They are in their rights to cancel features or raise prices. Just as you are in your rights to withdraw if they don't give you a deal. The reason why I mention this is that this approach is comical in some instances. A grocery store may raise the price of carrots. Typically you either deal with it or change stores. Prices rise occasionally. thus they will lose a lot of money from my savings From my understanding, a bank makes a large chunk of their money from fees. Very little is from the floating kitty they can have because of your savings. If you have an investment account with your bank (not recommended) or your mortgage, that would matter more. I've had friends who have left banks (and moved their mortgages) because of the bank not giving them a better rate. Does the manager have any pressure into keeping the account to the point of giving away free products to keep the costumer or they don't really care? Depends. I've probably say no. One data point is an anecdote; it is expected in a client base of thousands that a few will leave for seemingly random reasons. Only if mass amounts of clients leave or complain will the manager or company care. A note: some banks waive monthly account or service fees if you keep a minimal account balance. I have one friend who keeps X thousand in his bank account to save the account fee; he budgets a month ahead of time and savings account rates are 0% so this costs him nothing. Under US law, if you clearly have more than half of a torn bill it is worth its full value; the smaller piece is worth nothing... except that having both halves makes the banking system much happier, since it prevents some particularly stupid counterfeiting attempts. So this proposal wouldn't be cheat-proof unless the cut is close enough to the middle to make determining 51% difficult. And I'd like to see you try to explain to a bank how so many bills were cut in half... (This is more normally an issue when money has been damaged unintentionally, of course.) Also people don't disable overdraft. Or after they get hit with the fee, they don't change their behavior.   Although that being said, I never balance my checkbook. But then again I never use debit cards and I usually only ever have 1 check outstanding at a time. I'd like to take a moment to point out:  I cannot find a bank that charges customers with a checking account fees for withdrawing from an atm owned by that same bank. It is a cornerstone of most banks now to encourage online and atm banking. You should definitely research the validity of the claim that you're associate cannot withdraw from their own account through their own bank's atm without fees. A second scenario I can think of, is that this person uses a bank that does not operate in your region.  Then they cannot find an atm owned by their bank.  If this is the case, they should simply go to the bank the check is drawn on, and cash it there.  So far I only know of Chase bank charging non-Chase customers to cash a check drawn on a Chase account (this is a crap policy that makes me hate that bank). **disclaimer - I am not familiar with all banks, but a quick Google search of banks that operate in your region should reveal which ones if any charge their customers for use of their atms.  you may or may not find the check cashing charge policy without attempting to cash the check. Savings accounts have limitations in case a bank goes belly up and you have a higher amount in the account (more than the insured amount). Mostly big corporations or pension funds cannot rely on a bank to secure their cash but a government bond is secured (with some fine print) and hence they are willing to take negative interest rates. "There are, in fact, two balances kept for your account by most banks that have to comply with common convenience banking laws.  The first is your actual balance; it is simply the sum total of all deposits and withdrawals that have cleared the account; that is, both your bank and the bank from which the deposit came or to which the payment will go have exchanged necessary proof of authorization from the payor, and have confirmed with each other that the money has actually been debited from the account of the payor, transferred between the banks and credited to the account of the payee.  The second balance is the ""available balance"". This is the actual balance, plus any amount that the bank is ""floating"" you while a deposit clears, minus any amount that the bank has received notice of that you may have just authorized, but for which either full proof of authorization or the definite amount (or both) have not been confirmed. This is what's happening here. Your bank received notice that you intended to pay the train company $X. They put an ""authorization hold"" on that $X, deducting it from your available balance but not your actual balance. The bank then, for whatever reason, declined to process the actual transaction (insufficient funds, suspicion of theft/fraud), but kept the hold in place in case the transaction was re-attempted. Holds for debit purchases usually expire between 1 and 5 days after being placed if the hold is not subsequently ""settled"" by the merchant providing definite proof of amount and authorization before that time. The expiration time mainly depends on the policy of the bank holding your account. Holds can remain in place as long as thirty days for certain accounts or types of payment, again depending on bank policy. In certain circumstances, the bank can remove a hold on request. But it is the bank, and not the merchant, that you must contact to remove a hold or even inquire about one." I work at a large bank, that isn't too unusual although a lot of banks are moving to fee-free basic accounts and upping their fees on other specific transactions. For example, my bank did away with minimum balance requirements to waive a monthly service fee, but we started charging $2/month for paper statements and upped our out-of-network ATM fee by 50 cents.  Would like to point out that most financial institutions will reorder your transactions slightly for the purposes of accounting. It is much easier to run all transactions in big batches at the end of the day than individually as they come in. Required disclosures you receive upon account opening explain the exact order but most banks do all credits (money in) first and then debits (money out) like checks, debit cards, and ACH payments after. If you overdraft you can usually avoid a fee if you make a cash deposit before the end of the business day as the cash will go into your account before your purchases are debited.  OCCASIONALLY this accounting-based reordering will result in additional fees but that is not the intended purpose of reordering them. And I would always refund any incurred fees that happened due to accounting-based transaction reordering.   What Wells Fargo is doing has been illegal since 2008 and their continued appeals are hoping to get the ruling overturned so they won't have to pay out restitution to affected customers. It's frankly despicable. Yes. it is possible, I have seen many times banks permitting overdrawing and later charging a high courtesy fees. Of course in many countries this is not permitted. In one of my account, I am running negative balance as the bank has charged its commission which is not due.