Mail-In Deposits

Some people cannot or choose not to participate in credit cards and online payment schemes like PayPal. We respect that decision, and we do still accept checks, cashiers' checks (also known as bank checks or certified checks), and money orders sent through the good old-fashioned postal service as deposits to your NearlyFreeSpeech.NET account. (We'll call them all checks here just to keep from being wordy.)

If you are a member and you would like to make a deposit by check, just use the "Deposit Funds" action on your account information panel in our UI to initiate it. The process is pretty self-explanatory, and much easier than it used to be!

If you are not a member and you would like to make a donation by check (or any other supported payment method) to support a site hosted here, contact the site operator. If they have chosen to allow that, they can give you a special link to use for that purpose.

We try to credit members' deposits in the full amount, less a $4.00 mail-in deposit fee that accurately represents the cost of manually processing each check, when we receive them, and we will always do that for money orders and cashiers' checks. If you're a new member or your check is for a large amount then we may credit part right away and wait for your check to clear to deposit the rest.

Because of the high cost of manual processing, mailed-in deposits are most cost-effective for larger amounts, over $100.

Some other general reminders for mailed deposits:

  • We cannot accept cash through the mail.
  • We can't accept third-party checks.
  • We can't accept obviously forged or falsified checks, not even for anonymous deposits. (You know we're only mentioning it because it's happened.)
  • We can't accept checks that are not denominated in US Dollars.
  • We can't accept checks drawn on banks outside the United States Federal Reserve clearing system. (The last time we tried it, the bank took six weeks to figure it out and threatened to charge us a fee larger than the amount of the actual deposit.)