November 17, 2025
What to Do With Old Checks: How to Help Protect Your Business from Fraud
Despite the growth of digital payments, paper checks remain a preferred method of payment for many businesses. Although checks have long been regarded as reliable financial instruments, they are also susceptible to fraudulent activities. According to the 2025 AFP Payments Fraud Survey Report, 63% of organizations experienced attempted or actual check fraud in 2024. However, 75% of those organizations reported having no plans to reduce check usage in the next two years. Therefore, companies should take steps to help safeguard their business checks from falling into the wrong hands and help protect against fraud.
Old Checks Aren’t Harmless – They’re a Hidden Liability
Businesses can accumulate unused or outdated checks for many reasons – changing addresses, rebranding, switching banks, or closing accounts. It’s easy to assume these checks are no longer valuable, but they can be a goldmine for fraudsters and put your organization at risk.
Even a check that’s no longer valid can contain sensitive information, such as bank account and routing numbers, business names and contact details, and authorized signatures. Access to this information enables malicious actors to create counterfeit checks, initiate unauthorized transactions, or even commit identity theft in your company’s name. Ultimately, fraudsters don’t need current information but just enough to impersonate your business and deceive financial entities or third parties.
Tossing Checks in the Trash? Think Again.
It is a common misconception that disposing of confidential papers in a regular trash can or recycling bin is a secure practice. In fact, this method should not be used to discard unneeded checks. Throwing papers into insecure bins can potentially jeopardize important information because anyone can take them out when no one is looking.
Dumpster diving is a tactic used by some bad actors to access sensitive business information, such as checks, bank statements, or pre-approved credit offers.
It’s also important to understand, even if you use a personal or corporate shredder, strip-shredded documents can often be reconstructed. With time and effort, information can be pieced together like a puzzle – especially when larger volumes are thrown away at once.
Secure Disposal: How to Properly Destroy Checks
To help protect your organization, it’s essential to dispose of business checks using a secure, professional document destruction service, like Shred-it®, to help safeguard your business from fraud.
Shred-it® uses locked consoles and NAID-certified processes designed to help safeguard businesses from unauthorized access to sensitive information. Unlike personal shredders that typically use strip-shredding, which may be less secure, Shred-it® employs industrial cross-cut shredders that produce small, confetti-like pieces of paper that cannot be reconstructed. These pieces are then bundled and recycled.
The destruction of outdated or unused checks can help prevent forgery, identity theft, and data misuse, and supports compliance, accountability, and protection of sensitive information.
Help Prevent Unauthorized Access of Checks
Protecting your business goes beyond shredding old documents. Current checks should be properly stored, access should be restricted, and employees should follow clear policies like clean desk practices. When away from their desks, employees must remove all sensitive physical documents, including checks, from the desk surface, lock them up, or shred them to help prevent sensitive financial information from being exposed or misused.
Take Action to Safeguard Your Business
By taking simple but strategic actions to manage both active and inactive checks, your organization can lower risk and maintain strong financial relationships with vendors, customers, and employees.
A secure check disposal strategy isn’t just good housekeeping – it’s good business. In today’s environment, where payments fraud is high, secure, professional document destruction is a reliable way to significantly reduce risk and protect your organization.
Working with a trusted provider like Shred-it® can help ensure your organization’s sensitive documents are handled properly, from collection to destruction. Shred-it® offers a variety of secure document destruction services to help meet your company’s unique needs and compliance requirements. Learn more about how Shred-it® can help protect your business from fraud.
**This article is for general information purposes only and should not be construed as legal advice on any specific facts or circumstances.