Paying Canadian Teenagers via Check

[Owen]

Alright, so I'm gathering a team together to make my website. One of them is a 17 year old in Canada. We offer direct deposit and checks, but I don't think I can pay him via check, his preferable payment method. I'm in America, so how do checks work?

[Harold Mansfield]

Why not? As long as you are within whatever child labor laws there may be in Canada, you can pay him however you want.
You may want to think about a Pay Pal account if you're going to be doing business with people virtually.

Once a check is cashed, you're *ssed out. But Pay Pal and credit/debit card payments offer a little more protection.
Especially when you're dealing with people out of state and out of country.

[Owen]

Why not? As long as you are within whatever child labor laws there may be in Canada, you can pay him however you want.
You may want to think about a Pay Pal account if you're going to be doing business with people virtually.

Once a check is cashed, you're *ssed out. But Pay Pal and credit/debit card payments offer a little more protection.
Especially when you're dealing with people out of state and out of country.

PayPal seems good, but he isn't old enough to have an actual PayPal account. I'd like to know if the money I'm paying him on an unverified PayPal or his bank account.

[Harold Mansfield]

PayPal seems good, but he isn't old enough to have an actual PayPal account..
Yeah. but his parents are and he can have a student account with a debit card and everything else.
https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/helpcenter/helphub/article/?solutionId=FAQ2347

An unverified account just means it's not attached to a back account. It's more limiting for them than it is for you. Pay Pal won't let you open an account without a verified address, name, and SSN ( or whatever the equivalent is) and you still have the same protections against them.

I know a lot of people still write checks in this world, but doing business online and sending funds to service providers should be done with Pay Pal, Moneybookers or whatever online payment system you can use where you have the protections of your account or credit card.

Sending people checks, money orders and Western Union is always frowned upon.

Last thing...I don't have an issue with hiring a kid, but this kid is obviously a complete novice and is not set up to do business with anyone, why are you so confident that hiring a 17 year old from another country to build your most important marketing asset is the right way to go? I'm assuming because of the price.

But how much are you saving if you're already going through hassle just to do business with them? What other concessions are you going to have to make? Couldn't work on your site because of homework? Bed time? Date with his girlfriend? Baseball practice?

My point is, sure some kids are capable but if they want to play business with grown ups we expect them to have some basic business sense and skills. This isn't a movie. This is real life and you are about to send this kid real money and you're already off to a bad start and baby sitting this kid.