How to wire a check internationally (US to China) without a bank account?

Question

I moved from the US to China. I'm trying to clear out all my accounts and consolidate my assets into my bank accounts in China. I mistakenly closed my bank account before my investment account. Now, with all my accounts closed, I received all my balances as paper checks. How do I "wire" those checks into my bank accounts in China? All the international money transferring services, like Western Union and Wise, require a bank account as payment method. None of them accept a check.

Theoretically, I could have those checks mailed to me, and I can deposit them into a Chinese bank account. This is a well-established practice, commonly used for international trade. It takes a long time for the check to clear, but costs very little. However, recently the regulatory bodies in both the US and China have become a bit paranoid. My local Chinese bank branches are reluctant to accept my check. Instead, they recommend that I deposit the check into a US bank account, then wire the money to them. However, I've closed my US bank account.

Is there a wire transfer service that accepts payment by check? Or is bitcoin my only option?

Answer 1

How's bitcoin an option? Not sure why it's even relevant. I've never heard of a way to mint bitcoins using paper checks.

Your alternatives are:

• Deposit the check in a Chinese bank. It will take long time to clear. You may need to do some legwork until you find a bank that would be willing to deal with you. But I'm not aware of any legal reason on either side of the Pacific as to why you wouldn't be able to do that.

• Deposit the check in a US bank account. You'll need to open a bank account. Given that you probably have a US credit history and tax id, you might be able to do it remotely and deposit the checks through an app, but given that you're physically located in China... maybe not. So you might need to travel to the US.

• Sell the checks to whoever agrees to buy them from you. You'll probably lose a lot of the value. You may get back not money in China, but, for example, bitcoins or some other monopoly money which you'll then have to sell again to someone else to eventually convert into Chinese currency in your Chinese bank account. You'll lose a portion of your money during each of these exchanges. Probably not a small one.

No reputable check cashing service in the US would deal with you remotely. You probably don't want to deal with non-reputable ones.

Checks will take time to clear, the sooner you want the money the more risk your buyer is taking - which will be reflected in the price you'd be getting for these checks.

• One last option you could try is contacting the investment account institution and asking them if they'd take the checks back and instead wire the money to you. They might agree, but it may require some convincing since technically they no longer owe you anything. You should have just asked them to wire the money to you in China.

Answer 2

PayPal Business might be the only logical method for those whom are in this situation. What you'd do is ask a family member living in the United States to use their address. Then sign up with their address on PayPal and proceed to cash the checks within the PayPal business app, then, order a debit card and use the temporary PayPal digital card and contact-less payments to withdrawal local currency at an ATM and PayPal business will automatically do the conversion without bank fees only currency transfer.

Note: you may have to use a location mask and vpn to deceive PayPal that you are in the United States.

Side-Note: this method has not been field tested and this entire statement may not be usable to begin with.

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