Cheques are being cashed twice. What are banks doing about it?

Have you ever popped a check into a birthday card or use a check to pay for your rent? Maybe work on your house or your kids? Summer camp? Canadians wrote more than 276,000,000 checks last year. Most are cashed using a mobile banking app. You take a picture of your check and voila, it's deposited into your account. But did you know that you can deposit a check more than once? That's what happened to Christopher Michaels about a month ago. He noticed $150.00 check on his bank records he didn't remember writing. There's not a lot of checks that typically go through that particular account, so. It was just odd when you took a closer look. It was a check. He'd given us a wedding gift 18 months earlier. The check was first cashed in July 2022 and again in December 2023 using a mobile app. Michael's reported it to his Royal Bank branch and filed their police report, but he's upset that his bank didn't detect it in the first place. I think it's definitely like a flaw in the system. But some say banks haven't done much to fix that flaw. To compensate a few thousand victims, a few $100 each is so much cheaper than designing a whole new system to try to prevent this fraud that they just ignore it. He says he hasn't used a check in years and says people should use E transfers instead. The Canadian Bankers Association wouldn't discuss specifically what it does to prevent and detect cheque fraud. That said, they're constantly evolving their security measures to protect their customers. They say you should check your accounts often. Look for any double deposits, but if it's been more than 90 days, you might not get your money back. Michael's only caught his double deposit five months later, but after CVC contacted Royal Bank, he got his money back along with an apology. In my case it's $150.00. It's not a lot, but what about if I I'm a person who lives like paycheck to paycheck? That money could be very like, very important. He thinks banks need to do a better job of protecting people's money.