A bank lockbox costs about $0.27 to $0.57 per check on the current fee schedules banks actually publish, plus a monthly maintenance charge of $105 to $300 and a setup fee of $125 to $300. Once you add the lines every working lockbox needs (images, a daily data file for your AR system, deposits), the all-in cost on the same 1,000 checks a month runs from $708 to $1,080 across the banks we priced, or $0.71 to $1.08 per check. The cheapest bank at 200 checks is not the cheapest at 5,000, so price your volume a year out, not today's.
Every figure below was read on October 14, 2026, from a bank's own fee schedule, a pricing notice the bank sent to clients, or a state treasury contract that discloses the rate a bank agreed to. Nothing comes from a software directory or a blog quoting "typical ranges". Where a schedule is older than 2023 we say so, because lockbox prices go up a few cents almost every January.
The first thing the research shows is what is missing. JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, U.S. Bank, PNC, Citizens, Regions, KeyBank, Fifth Third and Huntington publish no lockbox price anywhere we could find. Truist is the only large bank whose lockbox rates show up in public documents, through its annual repricing notices and a West Virginia state contract. If you are quoting one of the others, the numbers below are your benchmark for whether their proposal is fair.
Lockbox services pricing by bank
This is the wholesale (business to business) check lockbox, where the bank opens the envelope, deposits the check, images the remittance and sends you the data. The per-item fee is the line every bank prints. The other columns are where proposals stop being comparable.
| Provider | Per item fee (checked 2026-10-14) | Monthly fee | Setup fee | Schedule effective |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BancFirst (Oklahoma) | $0.35 per item, plus $0.40 per deposit and $0.10 image capture | $125 maintenance; data file $125 and image file $125 a month | Passed through at cost | January 1, 2024 |
| First National Bank (FNB, Pennsylvania) | $0.57 standard, $0.37 exception rate, plus $0.15 per remittance imaged | $110 maintenance; integrated file $250 | $150 | February 1, 2025 |
| First Horizon Low-Volume Lockbox | $0.57 up to 200 items a month, then $2.00 per item | $105, imaging and 30 day archive included | $300 | August 2023 |
| Sunrise Banks (Minnesota) | $0.45 per deposited item, plus $0.45 per document scanned and $0.75 per deposit | $125 per account | $200 | March 2025 |
| American Riviera Bank (California) | $0.53 remittance processing, plus $0.08 image backup | $300 | $240 | Current web schedule |
| Mechanics Bank (Northern California boxes) | $0.50 per deposited item, $0.10 document capture, coupon data capture free | $150 per account | $125 per company | October 15, 2024 |
| Mechanics Bank (Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago, Pittsburgh boxes) | $0.46 per item, $0.94 per batch, $0.09 check clearing | $18.75 maintenance plus $100 fixed processing; transmission $87.50 | Not printed | October 15, 2024 |
| Truist (repricing notices) | Base rate not published; wholesale lockbox deposit $1.40, postage $0.79 per item from 2026 | Not published | Not published | January 1, 2024 and 2026 |
Two older schedules are still online and still get quoted: Sunwest Bank (2021) at $0.25 for a scanline item and $0.65 for a check without one, $100 setup and $100 a month, and Cambridge Savings Bank (2020) at $0.45 per item and $175 a month. Treat both as history. Both are older than the price notices most banks have sent since.
Read the FNB row twice. The same schedule prints a standard rate of $0.57 and an exception rate of $0.37, which is the bank telling you in writing that a 35% discount on the item fee is something its treasury team can approve. Every published rate in this table is a ceiling, not the price a company with 2,000 checks a month should accept.
What a lockbox costs at 200, 1,000 and 5,000 checks a month
To make the schedules comparable, we priced one workload on each bank: business checks arriving with a remittance document, every check and remittance imaged, one deposit per business day (21 a month), and one daily data file to your accounting or AR system where the bank charges for it. Setup fees and P.O. box rent, which most banks pass through at cost, are left out. American Riviera prints its transmission line as "$114 per transaction", which we could not interpret with confidence, so its column excludes transmission.
| Bank | Monthly cost formula | 200 checks | 1,000 checks | 5,000 checks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BancFirst | $258.40 + $0.45 per check | $348 | $708 | $2,508 |
| Mechanics Bank (Northern California) | $150 + $0.60 per check | $270 | $750 | $3,150 |
| American Riviera Bank | $300 + $0.61 per check | $422 | $910 | $3,350 |
| FNB, standard rates | $360 + $0.72 per check | $504 | $1,080 | $3,960 |
| Sunrise Banks | $140.75 + $0.90 per check | $321 | $1,041 | $4,641 |
| First Horizon Low-Volume | $105 + $0.57 per check to 200, then $2.00 | $219 | $1,819 | Not designed for it |
Three things fall out of that table that no single fee schedule shows.
First, the cheapest lockbox at 200 checks is the most expensive at 1,000. First Horizon's low-volume product is the best price on the page for a small AR team, $219 a month with imaging and archive included, but its $2.00 rate above 200 items turns a growing customer base into a $1,819 bill. If you take 150 checks a month today and add 10 customers a month, you cross that line inside a year. Ask the bank in writing what happens to your price the month you exceed the cap, and whether you move to their standard wholesale schedule automatically.
Second, the bank with the highest fixed charges wins at scale. BancFirst charges $258 a month before the first check (maintenance plus a data file), yet it is the cheapest bank from about 720 checks a month up, because its per-check cost including the image is $0.45. Sunrise is the reverse: low fixed charges and a $0.45 scanning charge on every remittance document make it the most expensive here at 5,000 checks.
Third, the negotiated rate moves the ranking. FNB at its printed exception rate ($0.37 instead of $0.57) costs $2,960 at 5,000 checks instead of $3,960, which puts it ahead of Mechanics Bank and American Riviera. That is a $12,000 a year difference from one line on one page, which is why the item fee is the first thing to negotiate.
The lockbox fees that sit outside the per-item rate
Lockbox bills grow on the lines a sales proposal summarizes as "processing". These are the ones to price before you sign, with the published rates we found for each.
| Fee line | What triggers it | Published rates we found |
|---|---|---|
| Exceptions and unprocessable items | A check with no coupon, a payment that does not match an invoice, a check payable to the wrong name | BancFirst $0.50 per item plus a $125 monthly exceptions module; American Riviera $0.46 per exception and $0.43 per client decision; Mechanics $0.60 per exception repair |
| Data entry (keying) | Fields the bank types because they cannot be read by machine | BancFirst $0.065 per keyed field; FNB $0.05 per keystroke; Mechanics $0.10 per hand-keyed field; Sunrise $0.01 per keystroke; Truist $0.019 per keystroke |
| Correspondence | Letters, address changes and disputes that arrive with payments | BancFirst $0.25 per item; FNB $0.25 per returned document; Mechanics $0.35 per item mailed back; Truist $0.17 per item indexed |
| Reassociation | Matching a check to remittance that arrived separately | BancFirst $0.15; American Riviera $0.25; Truist $0.15 for nonstandard reassociation |
| Data and image transmission | Sending a file your AR or ERP system can import | BancFirst $125 a month per file type plus $10 per transmission; FNB $250 a month integrated file; Mechanics $87.50 a month |
| Foreign and card items | Checks drawn on non-US banks, card payments mailed in | BancFirst $1 per foreign item; FNB $5 per foreign item and $0.75 per card item; Truist $0.77 per card item |
| P.O. box and postage | The box itself and any mail the bank forwards | FNB $154 or $165 a month by city; Truist $0.79 per item for wholesale postage; most banks pass through at cost |
Keying is the line that most often doubles a quote. A business check with a clean scanline coupon costs the item fee and nothing else. The same check with a handwritten note and no invoice number generates an exception, three or four keyed fields and possibly a client decision. If 30% of your payers do not use your remittance slip, your effective per-item cost is closer to $1.00 than $0.35 at any of these banks. That is also why a clear remittance stub on the paper invoice pays for itself; our invoice printing and mailing cost guide lists which print vendors include a return or remittance envelope in the per-piece price.
Retail lockbox pricing vs wholesale lockbox pricing
Retail lockbox fees run lower per item than wholesale because the work is different. A retail lockbox handles high volumes of consumer payments (utility bills, insurance premiums, loan payments) that almost always arrive with a machine-readable coupon for one exact amount, so the bank's scanner does the work and nobody keys anything. FNB's 2025 schedule prices retail lockbox at $0.27 per item, or $0.35 with an OCR scan, against $0.57 for wholesale, with a $165 monthly account fee. Cambridge Savings Bank's 2020 schedule charged $0.25 for a matched retail item and $0.30 for an unmatched one, the same logic in older numbers.
The practical rule: if your customers are businesses paying several invoices with one check, you need wholesale, and you should price exceptions and keying carefully. If they are consumers paying one bill with one coupon, ask for retail pricing even if the bank's proposal starts at the wholesale rate.
Electronic and virtual lockbox pricing
An electronic lockbox (banks also call it a virtual or e-lockbox) collects the ACH and wire payments your customers send electronically and matches the remittance data to your open invoices, without any paper. Because there is no envelope to open, the per-item fee is a fraction of the paper rate.
| Provider | Electronic lockbox price (checked 2026-10-14) | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Truist, West Virginia state contract | $40 a month plus $0.10 per item | State Treasurer agency master agreement, term 2024 to 2026, amended March 2025 |
| FNB EBOX | $50 a month plus $0.16 per item | Treasury management price schedule, February 2025 |
| Truist electronic lockbox | $60 a month maintenance (raised from $40) | 2024 client pricing notice |
| BancFirst virtual lockbox | $150 setup ($500 for full-page), monthly from $50 | Lockbox fee schedule, 2024 |
The West Virginia contract is the most useful number on this page for a large-bank negotiation. It shows Truist pricing an electronic lockbox at $0.10 per item for a public client at about 200 items a month, which is a rate any mid-size company can cite when a national bank quotes three times that.
How much does Bank of America lockbox cost?
Bank of America does not publish lockbox pricing, and neither do Chase, Wells Fargo or U.S. Bank. Their price comes in a proposal and then shows up line by line on your monthly account analysis statement, usually offset by an earnings credit on your balances. To judge a national-bank quote, set it against the published schedules above. A wholesale item fee above $0.57, or a data file above $250 a month, is higher than every current published schedule we found, and worth pushing back on.
Ask for the proposal in the same line items your account analysis statement will use, so the price you sign is the price you can audit. Then ask what earnings credit rate applies, because a bank can quote a low item fee and recover the margin through a low credit on your balances.
Is a lockbox worth it for a small business?
A bank lockbox is worth it once you receive more than about 50 checks a month, or fewer checks of high value where a day of float matters. Below that, a virtual mailbox that deposits checks for you costs less. LegalZoom Virtual Mail (formerly Earth Class Mail) charges $39 a month including five check deposits and $2 for each additional check, or $10 a check with no subscription. At 50 checks that is $129 a month against $133.50 on First Horizon's low-volume lockbox; at 100 checks the bank is $162 against $229 for the mailbox.
The difference is not just price. A mail scanning service deposits the check and shows you an image. A bank lockbox also captures the remittance data and delivers a file your AR team can post from, which is where the real labor saving is. If your team still types every payment into the ledger by hand, you are paying for the scanning without getting the posting. Many teams pair the lockbox file with tools that automate the bank reconciliation that follows each deposit, so the cash application step in the accounts receivable process no longer depends on someone reading check images.
Remote deposit capture (a desk scanner your team uses) is the other alternative. Sunwest's older schedule priced its version at $60 a month, $0.45 per item and a scanner lease of $50 to $75 a month, and the West Virginia contract prices remote deposit at $0.195 per item. It is cheaper per check than a lockbox, but someone on your team still opens the mail, scans each check and keys the remittance.
How to get lockbox quotes you can actually compare
Send every bank the same one-page profile and ask for pricing on it. The profile should state:
- Monthly check volume today and in twelve months, and the share of payments that arrive without your remittance coupon.
- Average number of invoices paid per check, which drives keying and reassociation.
- Whether you need a daily data file, image file, or both, and the format your AR or ERP system imports.
- How many correspondence items and foreign checks you see in a typical month.
- Your expected average collected balance, so the earnings credit can be priced.
Then ask four questions in writing. What is the all-in monthly cost for this profile? Which lines are passed through at cost? What happens to the price when volume crosses a tier or cap? Is there an exception or negotiated rate for the item fee? A bank that answers with a single per-item figure has not answered the question.
Lockbox fees are only one part of the cost of collecting cash. If you are weighing whether to keep collections in house at all, our accounts receivable outsourcing cost guide prices the providers that take over the whole function.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a lockbox cost?
A bank lockbox costs $0.27 to $0.57 per item on published 2023 to 2025 fee schedules, plus $105 to $300 a month in maintenance and a one-time setup fee of $125 to $300. With imaging, deposits and a daily data file included, the banks we priced charge $708 to $1,080 a month for 1,000 checks.
What are lockbox fees?
Lockbox fees are the charges a bank bills for receiving and depositing your mailed payments. The main lines are setup, monthly maintenance, a per-item processing fee and a per-deposit fee. Most banks add separate fees for images, data files, exceptions, keyed fields, correspondence and P.O. box rent.
Do national banks publish lockbox pricing?
No. Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, U.S. Bank, PNC and the other national banks we checked publish no lockbox rates. Truist's appear only in client repricing notices and a West Virginia state contract. Pricing from community and regional bank schedules is the best public benchmark for a national-bank proposal.
Is an electronic lockbox cheaper than a paper lockbox?
Yes, by a wide margin per item. Published electronic lockbox rates run $0.10 to $0.16 per item with a $40 to $60 monthly fee, against $0.35 to $0.57 per paper item before images and keying. The electronic version only handles ACH and wire remittances, so most companies that still receive checks need both.
Can you negotiate lockbox fees?
Yes. FNB's own schedule prints a standard item rate of $0.57 next to an exception rate of $0.37, and bank pricing for treasury services is routinely discounted against balances and volume. Negotiate the item fee and the data file charge first, since together they make up most of the bill.