Deposit Checks To Your Bank By Taking a Photo

Pickens writes "The Mercury News reports that consumers will soon be able to deposit a check by snapping a photo of it with a cell phone and transmitting an encrypted copy to their bank. Although some critics contend paperless deposits are an attempt by the banking industry to eliminate 'float,' the standard one- or two-day waiting period between the time someone writes a check and the time the money is actually taken out of their account, actually remote-deposit capture started out as a way for big companies and financial institutions to process huge numbers of checks without having to ship them around the country. 'Our customers are becoming more and more tech-savvy,' said an SVP for mobile banking at Citibank. 'We're trying to support those people on the go.' Although the process adds a new wrinkle to concerns about fraud and the privacy of financial data, banks and the technology companies helping them say they have largely overcome these concerns. Another bank SVP said, 'For many institutions struggling to raise deposits and differentiate, this is an outstanding offering they can roll out inexpensively [note: interstitial]. It's a sticky product.'"

Comments

Checks

[sopssa]

Or what if US just stops using inferior checks and just wires money like rest of the world? It's also possible to even push money in to credit cards directly, in addition to normal bank wires. Checks are insecure, inconvenient and pretty useless in today's electronic world. For non-electronical purposes you can just use cash.

Re:Checks

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to have a pretty firm grasp of our banking system :D

Re:Checks

[AndrewNeo]

This is something I have never understood. Why on earth do normal people use banks when there are credit unions?

Oh yeah, great idea

[Pojut]

Just what I want on my cell phone...a picture of a piece of paper that has my checking account number and bank routing number on it. ::eye roll::

Checks!

[OzPeter]

Another technology where the US is the world leader!

Go USA! Go USA!

USAA has been doing this for years

[Not-a-Neg]

USAA has offered "Deposit@Home" for years. Instead of taking a photo you can just scan the check and upload it. The only problem is they require you to have a credit card with them as well to qualify for the service. Hopefully, if other banks offer this service for free than USAA will change that policy. I hate having to mail in checks and sit around for two weeks waiting for them to deposit it.

Checks are "old school"

[oddaddresstrap]

I hardly ever use checks these days. Can I just take a picture of some cash and deposit it instead?

Re:Why not all electronic? No really, why not?

[jimicus]

Yes. We still have the freedom to own a firearm,

I don't have that unless I get a license and deal with a whole lot of legislation.

choose where to live,

I can live anywhere I please in the EU. What makes you think I can't?

express religious and political opinions without being jailed,

I can do this. What makes you think I can't?

choose our own doctors,

I can do this. What makes you think I can't?

choose whether to buy health insurance,

I can, if I so choose, buy private health insurance. Though for some idiot reason, many private insurance policies don't cover diagnostic procedures and finding out what's wrong with you is half the battle on the NHS. There's no legislative reason for the private insurers to refuse to cover diagnostic procedures, they're just wankers like that.

and choose where to go to college-- this week anyway. Next week? Who knows.

I did choose where to go to college. As did my brother. In both of our cases, a major part of the decision making process was "at least 100 miles away from here".

Seriously, are you trolling or do you have some vision of Europe as being a dystopia where everyone is told what to eat, what to think and how to shit from cradle to grave?