My understanding is that Vanguard will reinvest dividends for free for most stocks. They will support fractional shares for that. I would doublecheck for non-US stocks. For example I learned there was a weird thing for rds.b. They will do a scrip-type program where dividends will be reinvested, but technically the program reinvests in rds.a, so now you have a rds.a position, but Vanguard liquidates accounts with less than one full share at the end of the day, so unless you received enough dividends to buy a full share... If you don't reinvest, the dividend is deposited into your money market settlement fund, so that sounds like they won't send it direct to your personal checking account. But then there's a note in the faq that if the security is held directly in your name, the company sends it directly to you, so I don't know how you register it that way or if you can do that for all securities.