If you are trying to use a check at a pawn shop to pay off a loan, you might be in for a big surprise. Read the article to find out why.
Have you ever been asked a question that makes you stop everything you are doing and look at a person sideways?
Yeah, that is kind of like what I feel when someone asks me this question.
To be specific, what is being asked is if pawn shops will accept checks as a form of payment.
The assumption is that they are talking about getting something out of loan, and that’s how I’ll approach it.
That having been said, it might be a different picture if we are talking about payment on a retail sale, not a loan, but more on that later.
To answer the question on if pawn shops will let you pay with a check to get something out of loan, the simple answer is: NO!
Now, of course, I haven’t visited every pawn shop in the nation, so my answer is based purely on a decade of experience in the industry and the hundreds of pawnbrokers that I’ve interacted with.
If there is any pawn shop out there that does take a check as a form of payment for a loan, they are really operating outside of normal businesses practices and are certainly uncommon.
That having been said, if someone has taken out a very large loan (tens of thousands of dollars), I can understand them not wanting to walk about with that kind of cash on them.
In these cases, there might be another option to pay the pawn shop and I’ll tell you about that near the end of this post.
If you have something in on loan at a pawn shop and you want to get it out, you might think that you can pay with a check. However, most pawn shops will not accept checks for the repayment on loans for a variety of reasons.
Why Don’t Pawn Shops Accept Checks
When you really sit down and think about this, if you were the pawn shop, would you accept anything other than cash as a way of repayment?
Look at the scenario from the pawnbroker’s perspective.
You brought in an item (let’s say a gold ring.)
In exchange for holding onto that ring, the pawn shop gave you a certain amount of cash.
Now, we all know that cash is easy to spend anywhere. Gold is equally easy to melt down and turn into cash pretty quickly.
Now, in exchange for that gold ring, you want them to accept a form of payment that can be “Stopped” or may not be good to begin with?
There’s no way a pawn shop is letting go of a “Sure thing” with the gold ring in exchange for a risky form of payment like a check – that can be counterfeit, written from a closed account, or be cancelled as soon as you leave the pawn shop.
Do Pawn Shops Accept Cashiers Checks
Now then, while most pawn shops won’t accept personal checks, if your loan is very large, they may be willing to accept a cashier check that they can verify.
However, don’t count on this being the case.
It would be a very good idea to call the pawn shop that you are working with and ask them in advance if they would accept a cashier check for payment.
In some cases, you may find that they would accept it, particularly if they offer check cashing as a service, since they will be familiar with what most cashiers checks look like.
Do Pawn Shops Accept Money Orders
In some cases, a pawn shop will also accept money orders for payment on loans.
Again, if they offer check cashing services as well as pawn loans, they may very well be willing to take money orders as they will know exactly what they are looking at and have a certain comfort level with taking them.
Much like cashiers checks though, you are going to want to call ahead and make sure that they would accept it.
The last thing you want to do is go out and buy a money order just to find out that you can’t use it.
