Different banks have different policies as to whether and how long they’ll put a hold on a check. They also can vary it customer to customer based on your history with them. The hold periods are typically longer for international checks. (SolidPay checks come from Canada.) They may take into account check size as well.
Hold periods are not as long as they used to be, as laws were passed in recent years to crack down on banks holding checks for too long. (The purpose of the hold is supposed to be to give the bank sufficient time to ascertain if the check is good; too many banks were instead simply putting long holds on deposits to increase the amount of time the customer does not have access to his money and hence that they can use it and make money on it.)
The thing to remember, though, is their decision to release the funds to you is not an indication that you’re off the hook if the check later turns out to be no good. For example, a bank might put a ten day hold on a certain kind of check because in their experience, 99% of the time that the check comes back to them with a problem it is within the first ten days. So they figure it’s probably good after ten days have gone by. But it’s just a guess. If they release the funds to you after ten days, and they find out a day, a week, or a month later that the check was forged or there is some reason they can’t collect on it, then you owe that money back to them.
So your bank might not put a hold on your check at all, or they might put some monstrous thirty day hold on it, and all that impacts is when you’re allowed access to your money. It doesn’t mean the check’s any good when they release the hold, or that you’re off the hook if it’s not.
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