You want to buy a car and pay by check, but it’s across state lines. Whether you plan to travel and finish the deal in person or purchase the car remotely, it’s legal and possible to pay by check. But long-distance car transactions are risky, awkward, and time-consuming, and check payments make the purchase even harder.
We’ll show you how to buy a car out of state and pay by check. Then, we’ll show you a better solution to long-distance car purchases that will make you want to ditch the paper and go digital.
When buying an out-of-state car by check, you have a few options, but most of them aren’t going to cut it.
Most sellers won’t accept personal checks. These checks draw directly from your bank account and can bounce, leaving the seller without payment after transferring the title. Even if a seller were willing to accept one, they’d likely insist on waiting for the check to clear before releasing the vehicle—too time-consuming and risky for long-distance transactions.
Cashier’s checks are the best choice for out-of-state car purchases. Your bank verifies your funds and issues a check drawn from their own reserves. These checks can’t bounce, which is why most sellers accept cashier’s checks as a form of payment.
However, cashier’s checks come with drawbacks:
If you want to pay by check, use a cashier’s check and send it as registered mail.
Certified checks fall between personal and cashier’s checks. Your bank certifies you have the funds and will draw payment directly from your account. While more secure than personal checks, they offer no advantage over cashier’s checks, and many sellers are unfamiliar with them.
If you bank with a credit union, verify their process for issuing cashier’s checks. Some smaller institutions have limits on check amounts or require additional verification for large transactions.
There’s nothing special involved here. Paying for a car with a check across state lines is just like doing it in your home state, but you will need to coordinate more than usual.
If you’re buying the car in person, meet the seller at their bank and confirm the vehicle’s condition. Then, the seller will call your bank to verify the check. Once the check is confirmed, they can cash the check and sign over the vehicle title.
If you’re buying the vehicle remotely, things are a little tricky. You’ll need to hire an inspector/agent to check the car, handle documentation, and coordinate with the shipping company.
Once you’ve decided to buy the vehicle, you’ll ship the check and wait. After the check arrives, the seller will verify and cash it, and your agent will handle the logistics of getting the car to you. If letting multiple strangers and the postal service manage your car purchase sounds like a slow, risky, complex process, that’s because it is.
Many people hire an escrow service to handle low-trust transactions, such as long-distance car purchases. Escrow companies hold your money until the purchase conditions have been met, creating trust between private parties.
Escrow is a great way to make sure the seller follows through on their side of the bargain, but coordinating with an escrow will slow things down and drive the sale price up. Escrow services aren’t cheap, and they require a lot of information and verification between parties.
Unfortunately, escrow is your best option if you want to safely pay by check during a remote sale. But what if you skipped the paper, saved a tree, and paid for the car a better way?
DealNow is the faster, safer, and easier way to buy a car long distance. Find the car you like, then use our intuitive mobile app to handle the entire transaction and make no limits, instant payments.
Checks are tied to banking hours. They can be stolen, lost, or destroyed, and sellers will insist on verifying them before completing the transaction. DealNow verifies both parties so you and the seller can proceed with confidence. Then, fund your FDIC-insured DealNow account and enjoy instant payments of any amount, anywhere, anytime. Sellers never need to worry about forgery or bounced checks, and you don’t need to wait for shipping, verification, or clearance.
DealNow provides escrow-like service at a much cheaper price. Our step-by-step dealflow has both parties sign a state-specific digital bill of sale before payment. A bill of sale is a legally binding document that records the transaction. Should the seller try to take your payment and disappear, a bill of sale would hold up in court (and they gave us their ID during sign-up). Your digital bill of sale is saved to the cloud and always available through your DealNow dashboard. Just like escrow, DealNow creates trust between parties so you can get the deal done.
We make purchasing a car long distance as easy as buying one locally. Use in-app messaging to coordinate with the seller. Hire an inspector from your DealNow dashboard, and experience the inspection via phone or video call.
Because DealNow payments are instant, the inspector doubles as your agent. No one needs to wait for a check to arrive by mail. Send payment instantly, and let the inspector coordinate the transfer of ownership and shipping.
DealNow facilitates the entire process of buying an out-of-state car. Enjoy other third-party features, such as title check, vehicle history report, mechanical inspection, shipping, insurance, and even financing. Think about how many checks you’d have to write to get all that done. Then, use DealNow.
We’ve told you why DealNow is awesome. Now let’s walk through the steps for buying a long-distance car with DealNow:
Checks used to be a good way to pay for a car, but that was before DealNow. Once you buy a car with us, you’ll never want to do it any other way.
To avoid cashier’s check fraud, the recipient should meet the payer at the payer’s bank during business hours and have the bank verify the check on the spot.
Cashier’s checks should always be verified before a transaction is completed.
Skilled criminals use computer software, color copiers, and high-quality printers to forge cashier’s checks. They might go so far as to print fake contact information on the check so their victim is routed to an accomplice who “verifies” the check over the phone.
In a car transaction, the seller might transfer vehicle ownership believing they’ve been paid only to discover later that they’ve lost their vehicle and never had the money.
There is no legally imposed limit for cashier’s checks; any limitations are set by the issuing institution. Small banks and credit unions often cap cashier’s checks at $10k to $20k, but large banks can usually issue cashier’s checks for $1 million or more, well exceeding the price of most private-party cars.
A vehicle history report shows you information about the vehicle’s past. To order one, ask the seller for the car’s vehicle identification number (VIN). This detailed report includes:
DealNow lets you order a vehicle history report from your dashboard, making it easy to verify the car’s condition before purchase.
After the vehicle purchase process, you’ll need to complete several steps:
You might legally own the vehicle, but it’s not legal to drive until it is registered with the state, insured, and mechanically safe.
The best form of payment when buying a car is DealNow. DealNow combines the safety and confidentiality of a bank with the speed and convenience of a mobile payment app.
Here’s why buyers love paying with DealNow:
And with so many perks for sellers, DealNow is the best way for both parties to exchange large sums of money during a car transaction.
When accepting a check you need to look out for these common signs of fraud:
Always verify the check with the issuing bank and wait for it to fully clear before releasing your vehicle. If something feels off, trust your instincts and proceed with caution.
A legitimate cashier’s check can’t have insufficient funds. Unlike personal checks, cashier’s checks are drawn directly from the bank’s reserves, not an individual’s account. When a cashier’s check is purchased, the buyer provides the funds upfront, which the bank then guarantees.
This doesn’t mean cashier’s checks are immune to fraud. While the check itself can’t “bounce” due to insufficient funds, bad actors create counterfeit checks. Always verify the check’s authenticity with the issuing bank before completing your private sale.
A money order is a prepaid financial instrument used to transfer funds, typically for smaller amounts. They’re sort of like a check that isn’t tied to a bank or the purchaser’s bank account. And they’re a bad alternative to cashier’s checks.
Unlike a cashier’s check, which is issued by a bank and drawn from the bank’s own funds, a money order can be purchased from post offices, convenience stores, and financial institutions.
Money orders generally have maximum transaction limits of $1000, and customers are often not allowed to buy more than two or three in a day. If someone wanted to buy a car for $10k, they would have to spend 4–5 days purchasing money orders to pay. Cashier’s checks have no transaction limits and are a much better option for high-dollar car sales.
Poor security has made money orders a favored tool of chargeback scammers. Since they’re not linked to identification or bank accounts, they can be hard to track. Similar to personal checks, the funds from money orders are deposited immediately, but if the money order is later discovered to be fraudulent, the funds will be withdrawn from the recipient’s account.
With cashier’s checks, as long as the recipient verifies the check, there is no doubt it is authentic and backed by the issuing bank.
Private sellers have no good reason to accept money orders in a car transaction, and buyers have no good reason to try to pay with them.
DealNow is the easiest way to close your own vehicle deal, anytime. It’s the safe and simple way to avoid fraud, sign documents, and instantly transact, all in one app.
