When you deposit money to your checking account the bank usually puts hold on your funds. Sometimes deposit is released sooner while in other cases it can take longer time. So how long can a bank hold your deposit?

There are many types of deposit and hold time can vary.

Cash Deposits

Deposits of cash and cash equivalents like cashiers checks and money orders should be available to withdraw on the next business day. It means deposits made on Monday should be available on Tuesday.

Paper checks

On the other hand, if you deposit a paper check it gets more complicated. Big banks often clear small checks on the next business day, but smaller banks can hold your funds for up to 12 days. Take Ingo Money as an example. Their terms and conditions explicitly say that funds are going to be on hold for a long time. Make sure to read how to deposit a paper check to your bank account.

Small checks under $225 should become available on the next business day. Checks that are under $5,225 can be released in 2 business days. Large checks that are over the amount can stay on hold up to 5 days. However, in some cases banks can put hold even longer.

Usually the reason to extend hold time for a check is that the account is repeatedly overdrawn or just a new account. Additionally, the paying bank can decline a transaction and the check has to be redeposited.

ACH transfers

ACH transfers when made as a push transaction from a sending bank usually make money available in 2 business days. However, when ACH transfer is made as a pull transaction initiated from a withdrawing bank, it can take up to 4 days.

The time of hold is also called the settlement period. For example, Fidelity usually settles cash within 2 business days.

So the bottom line is that how long a bank holds your funds depends on many factors like the nature of transaction, amount of transaction, and policy of specific bank.

You may find helpful funds availability page on HelpWithMyBank.gov website.

You can also check my video on how long do bank transfers take.

Routing number is a unique 9-digit identifier of your bank. It helps banks to route transfers and deposits to your bank account. The Internet is full of articles that suggest taking a look at your paper check.

I don’t have the goddamn checkbook!

You can order the checkbook and pay a fee. Then wait a week or two till it arrive in mail. Or pay an extra to get it overnight. All this just to take a look on the bottom left corner and find the routing number? What a waste of time and money! There must be a better way!

Many banks don’t offer a checkbook at all

Online only and mobile only banks don’t offer a checkbook at all. They are cutting their costs at every corner. Given the fact that checkbooks are rarely used by the majority of customers. There are easier ways to find your bank’s routing number.

Read how to find routing number and account number for PNC Bank account.

Bank’s Mobile App

The first place to look for a routing number should be the mobile app of your bank. Most commonly the number can be found in the direct deposit section or in your profile. Here are a few examples.

Here is how you can find routing number and account number for

Bank’s Website

Online only banks can show you the routing number after you logged in on their website. It is often placed in the “setup direct deposit” section. When you are looking for banks account number, you can always find its routing number. Here is an example from Ally bank.

Bank’s statement

If you are really from old school and prefer having hard copies, you can still find the bank’s routing number in statement.

Just don’t Google it

It may be tempting to try to find the routing number by just googling it. However, it is a bad idea because big banks have separate numbers for each state. It means that the routing number of Bank Of America’s customers who live in California is different from those who live in New York.

Mobile only banks often use backing banks that hold funds, so your Cash App account may have a routing number of Sutton bank and Netspend often uses Metabank.

Bottom line

You can find the routing number and account of your bank using its mobile app. If mobile app is not an option you can find it on banks website. You don’t need the paper check to find the routing number!

Why would anyone need a fake bank statement? When you rent an apartment or apply for a loan you have to prove your income. The same happen when you apply for mortgage. Bank always want to see your bank’s statements for the last 60 days. Mortgage officers want to know that money is seasoned.

One of the ways to prove that you regularly receive money is to show your bank statement. If your balance sheet is not great you may want to edit it and provide a fake bank statement. What can possibly go wrong?

Technically it is easy to edit the statement. You can make a replica of original statement in any rich text editor. Adobe Photoshop can make you look like a millionaire overnight! Check these screenshots of bank account balance. But you should never even try doing this. Because Photoshop will also make you a REAL criminal overnight.

Providing a fake bank statement is a very bad crime that can cost you an arm and leg. Document forging can result not only in rejecting your application, but also put you behind bars. Keep in mind that making a fake bank statement is not a petty crime. Faking bank documents is a felony that stays with you for many years and pops up every time you try to pass a background check.

Students that successfully cheated in school and in college think that cheating must be working with banks too. After all, if it worked on the final exams, it could work in other spheres of life. Right? Little do they know that forging bank documents is a felony. And felons always regret making false documents. You can make a fake statement only once and there is no second chance.

When you apply for a high paying job and claim skills that you don’t actually have it can result in disappointed interviewers. But when you pass the technical part of the interview and fail a background check this must be a blow.

Fake statements in the past can be a reason for big banks to deny you opening bank accounts. This happens because people who make fake bank statements are not trustworthy. As a punishment you get a record in ChexSystems. That is much better than going to jail, but still a bad experience.

The bottom line is that fake bank statements can cost you thousands of dollars in long run. Because a clean background opens numerous opportunities. For example, really dedicated bank churners can earn more than $1,000 in the form of signup bonuses for checking accounts and credit cards in just one year.

If you have an Everyday checking account at Wells Fargo bank, you may want to transfer money to Cash App to use them. Banks and fin-tech apps often have various ways to transfer money. Big banks can offer Zelle, paper checks, and wire transfers, but the most popular way to transfer money between your own accounts is an ACH transfer.

ACH transfer from Wells Fargo

The first option is to perform an ACH transfer from your Wells Fargo checking account. To do so, go to the bank’s website and enter your username and password. If you have 2-factor authentication, enter a 6-digit verification code. Bank send the one-time security code to your phone via SMS, email, or as a push notification to the Wells Fargo mobile app. Then you enter the code and pass the verification.

After logging in, you must add Cash App as an external bank account.

Is Cash App legitimate?

You may suspect that Cash App is not a legitimate bank. How do you connect it? Cash App is a financial technology company that deposits your funds with one of its partner banks. Lincoln Savings Bank and Sutton Bank are two of them. They have FDIC insurance, so you can rest assured that your money will not vanish. FDIC is an abbreviation for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The FDIC is an independent agency established by the United States Congress following the Great Depression to ensure public trust in banks.

After you open your Wells Fargo checking account page find the “Transfer Money” button and click on it. Next on the Transfer Money page find the line “Non-Wells Fargo Accounts” and click on “Add Account”. On the “Add Non-Wells Fargo Account” page you have to certify that you own an external bank account. It means you cannot ACH transfer money to someone else account. Select “Personal Checking” if your Cash App is personal. But if your Cash App account is a business one, then you have to select “Business Checking”. The savings account option in this case is not applicable. You have to select how you intend to use the external account. I always select “Transfer and Payments”.

Next, you have to enter the routing number and account number. Here it is very important to find YOUR numbers. The easiest way to find them is in Cash App. Just open the app on your phone, tap on the left bottom corner, and at the top, you should tap on the account number at the top. It will show you the full account and routing numbers.

Trial transactions

After you fill in the details you can click continue. The next step is to verify ownership via a method called “Trial transactions”. During this step, the bank makes 2 deposits of less than $1. After this, it immediately withdraws the sum of the deposits. If you can enter the correct numbers, it means you have access to the account. Otherwise, you may have entered someone else’s account number and shouldn’t be allowed to transfer money.

Once you verify that you own a Cash App account, you can make an ACH transfer to Cash App and back. These transfers usually take 2 business days to complete. However, some banks can take up to 4 days to make money fully available to use or withdraw. But in my personal experience transfer from Wells Fargo to Cash App took only 2 days.

To better illustrate the process I’ve prepared screen-cast with step-by-step instructions. Watch my video below for more details.

Transfer using Wells Fargo debit card

The primary benefit of using a Wells Fargo debit card to transfer is the speed with which the transfer is completed. It is an immediate transfer. Compare it with an ACH transfer that takes at least two days! Your Wells Fargo debit card can be linked to the Cash App and a transfer can be made soon after. If you haven’t linked another debit card, you should be prompted to “Add a bank using your debit card” in the Cash App. However, if you previously linked another debit card, you must unlink it before connecting the Wells Fargo debit card.

Exotic way

The most exotic and expensive way is to withdraw cash from Wells Fargo ATM and deposit it to your Cash App account at a retail store like Walmart, Walgreens, or a few others. Be aware that this way costs a $1 deposit fee. I’ve tried to deposit $300 at a retail store and the cashier was very suspicious and called for a supervisor to help. Imagine how will you deposit $500 twice in the same store!

The bottom line

There is a very few ways to transfer money from Wells Fargo to Cash App. For example, mobile check deposit, Zelle transfer, and wire transfer are not available. Other banks and fin-tech companies like Chime bank have variety of options including mobile check deposit.

When you have an account at GO2Bank and some funds on the balance, you may want to withdraw money from GO2Bank. Can you withdraw money without a debit card? It can be a challenge to withdraw cash. How to take money from Go2Bank without a card?

Send yourself a paper check

You can withdraw money as a paper check. Just send it from GO2Bank to yourself. Bill pay is a feature that many banks offer. Go2Bank is not an exception. It has a bill pay feature that allows you to send a paper check as a bill payment. On your behalf Go2Bank prints the check, puts it in an envelope and sends it to the recipient. You can make payee yourself and fill your current mailing address. It can take up to 2 weeks for the check to be delivered.

Then you can deposit the check to your other bank account using the mobile check deposit feature or using the bank’s ATM. For example, Bank Of America, Chase, Wells Fargo, Capital One all of them have ATMs that accept paper checks.

Transfer money to external bank account

It is hard to withdraw money from Go2Bank without debit card. You cannot do it from Go2Bank mobile app. To withdraw money you have to link Go2Bank account in external bank and request the transfer. Big banks like Wells Fargo allow you to link an external account using account number and routing number of Go2Bank account. Bank sends 2 trial transactions of small amounts to Go2Bank. If you own the account, you can find the numbers and verify it in the big bank.

Small banks like Chime require you to login in Go2Bank using your login and password. The service is called Plaid. It works as a proxy between banks.

After you linked Go2Bank account, you can initialize the withdrawal.

It usually takes a couple of days for money to become available.

Use Virtual Wallet

If you have setup GO2Bank prepaid debit card in Apple Pay, Google Pay, or Samsung Pay, you can try to use contactless ATM. When you put your phone close enough to the contactless sign, the ATM may prompt your PIN and then you can withdraw cash. Keep in mind, however, that not all ATMs have this feature.

Since ATMs don’t allow you to withdraw cash using Virtual Wallet you can try a workaround. Make a purchase in retail stores like Walmart and during checkout you can select cashback. Then cashier can give you selected amount. The amount depends on retail store. Some of them require to make a purchase with some minimum amount.

Other than that there is no way to pull money out of Go2Bank claws.

When you apply for a credit card you maybe curious when is it going to arrive to your doorstep? Then answer to this question depends on few details.

If you are approved for the credit card on the spot or like banks often advertise “in 30 seconds”, then it can take up to 2 weeks. However, this is a worst case scenario. Usually delivery takes only 1 week.

However, there are conditions that can make your credit card arrive sooner or later. Premium and luxury cards are often sent in express mail. For example, I received my American Express Platinum in less than a week.

Secured credit cards in their turn may require you to make the security deposit first. And only then bank mail your card. So how long it take for a credit card to arrive depends on you. If you act fast, then credit card arrives soon. Read more about secured credit cards in my post.

If you are not approved immediately and bank takes some time to review your application it can take more time. For example, if bank request your checking account statement or other documents, the process can easily stretch over time for many weeks.

You can also order an express delivery by your self. This, however, will cost you are few bucks in delivery fee.