Deposit Checks To Your Bank By Taking a Photo 494
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.'"
USAA has been doing this for years (Score:5, Informative)
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.
meh, should have used USAA (Score:4, Informative)
Scanning a check exists now (Score:5, Informative)
USAA lets me scan a check for instant deposit using a Windows browser, a Java applet and an attached scanner.
I'm a Linux kind of guy and, sadly, I have not found a way to make it work on my Ubuntu and Suse systems. But, it works great with my Windows laptop and it's simply the next best thing to direct deposit.
Obviously, a good secure app for smartphones (hopefully one is coming soon for Android but they've only announced for iPhone so far) will be a step beyond the scanner approach.
I kind of like the idea that someone hands me a check, and by the time they have closed their briefcase I have already made the deposit. No more canceling. It would be interesting to see if they can determine whether the check is good or not, and send instant feedback.
The next step is going to be depositing cash. I would love to be able to quickly scan my cash into my account, and then tear up the paper money (honors system). Hmm; gotta think that one through a bit more.
Re:Oh yeah, great idea (Score:5, Informative)
Been using it for 6mos (Score:3, Informative)
I have had this option with usaa.com for almost a year now, and it's GREAT. As for the photo, it is NOT saved in your phone, ever. Once the bank accepts the images, it instructs you to write VOID on the check and shredd it. Quite nice to be able to drop a check in within minutes of receiving it, and use it too!
If you can't join USAA (Score:2, Informative)
Some credit unions offer this service as well; I'm using Alliant Credit union's eDepositplus and its working great. You just need to donate to a PTA or certain charities to join, not hard at all.
Re:Checks (Score:4, Informative)
Wire transfers cost $25 a transfer here.
old news? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Scanning a check exists now (Score:2, Informative)
Pentagon Federal Credit Union (Score:3, Informative)
We are in the process of rolling out this same sort of program at our company as well (as I've been building about a dozen servers to support it). We've had the ability to deposit by mail for ages and this is the next logical step.
With most of our userbase being military and deployed to locations where they cannot access any branch services at all. Our userbase has become tech savvy enough to support a system like this. The largest impediment to implementing a system like this has been having the tech easy enough to use a "non-geek" can perform the tasks necessary without needing a large amount of training.
To those saying "What if I want to deposit counterfit checks". Well several systems are in place to prevent or at least mitigate that damage. You are only allowed to deposit up to a certain amount via the system (and have funds immediately accessible), the checks are processed real-time and won't be accepted without several validity checks passing and the account money is being collected from also happens as close to real-time as possible. Remember, just cause you deposit a check doesn't mean it can't bounce, that money is not truely in your account until funds are transferred from the check writers account. If you have those funds available for use immediately, it's because your financial institution trusts you to now deposit bad checks.
The the comment above about "great, just what I want, images of checks on my phone". The application itself handles taking the photo and no local copy is retained on the phone after the process is completed. (The image of the check is still available on the company's servers for review just like if you mailed in checks or deposited them via our branches.)
Re:Checks (Score:1, Informative)
This, like almost all /. comments, reflects a lack of understanding about the country in which you live and vocabulary. A wire transfer is not the only way to transfer money between banks, individuals, or online. It is not a ubiquitous term, it is a specific form of transfer. Europe does rely more heavily on this, but this is because the EU has heavily regulated fees for Wire Transfers, thus making it cheap and popular.
In the US, wire transfers can cost up to $45, so no one uses them. Instead EFTS (Electronic Funds Transfer) is enormously popular in the US. You can pay almost anything online with a routing number and a bank number. I can, and do, pay all of my bills this way.
The only real difference between a Wire Transfer and an EFTS is that the Wire Transfer acts like a Cashier's Check and the EFTS acts like a Personal Check. This is important because a Cashier's Check is "guaranteed" by the bank. In a wire transfer, the bank, for lack of a better description, takes the money out of your account and gives it to another entity. In an EFTS transaction, the company receiving the money requests it from the bank, at which point the bank goes and checks to see if you have the money.
The difference is where the work is done. If you are doing the work of keeping track of your own money (running the risk of the bank finding insufficient funds) then you pay nothing and use EFTS. If the company you are going to pay doesn't trust you, or if you want to make sure this particular amount is going to go through, etc, the bank has to do some legwork. Historically, this legwork was considerable so there is a sizable fee. Today I admit this charge makes little sense unless you are dealing with particularly large amounts of money. Because the US is not a nanny state and forced banks to use particular payment or dispersment methods for low cost, the EFTS system grew more popular. Now that wire-transfer is almost exclusively used for large dollar amounts, it makes not sense to lower costs, and no one is forcing them.
In short, wire transfers are popular in Europe not because Europeans are more technologically savvy, but rather because there government stepped in an forced the market to offer it cheap or free. In the US a different, payer responsible, system was developed to offset bank costs and offer the same service for free. The other service still exists and elitists from other countries who can't do their own banking think that US citizen's still use checkbooks because they don't bother to learn how banking actually works.
This is similar to how England does overdraft. Overdraft is almost ubiquitously used in England. it took me a while to understand that you can just overdraw our account in England and pay interest to the bank. In short, everyone has a credit card who has a bank account. Everyone has a line of credit because mismanagement of accounts is so big a problem the bank just cashed in on it.
You may find it silly that I sometimes still write checks (like for my landlord who lives upstairs). That's fine. I find it silly that your entire country seems to be unable to manage basic home economics. We'll call it even.
Re:Checks (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why not all electronic? No really, why not? (Score:5, Informative)
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?
Re:Checks (Score:2, Informative)
Checks may seem "quaint" to you techies, but vast swaths of America's infrastructure and social mechanisms are still greased this way. Checks are superior to cash in too many ways: if I'm carrying my checkbook, I'm technically carrying as much cash as I have, and the recipient doesn't have to make change. If I send my kids to school with a check, lost,stolen, or "misdirected" is not an issue. Plus, I always have a receipt.
I've been doing this for years through my credit union, with my flatbed scanner. With cell phones commonly pushing over the 3 megapixel mark, it's not at all surprising to see this as a natural extension of the existing process.
Re:Checks (Score:3, Informative)
The fact that companies charge you to make electronic payments is criminal. Luckily, Progressive is the only company I deal with that does that to me.
Re:Checks (Score:4, Informative)
Oh, and what's up with paying huge interest-rates on a "credit card" when most people have a much cheaper line of credit backed by their house anyways ? How does it make sense to borrow from the credit-card-company and pay 10% interest or something, when mortgage-rates are a third that ?
Eh? I pay -ZERO- interest on my credit card. I just pay the balance every month.
Credit cards are not loans and if you use them as if they were, you’re an idiot. It doesn’t make sense to borrow from the credit card company and pay 14% (or higher) interest. You aren’t supposed to.
Re:$25 to transfer money to a friend?! (Score:5, Informative)
Internet Banking and Wire Transfers are different things in the US. If I want to pay a bill or transfer money to another person in the US using Internet Banking I can do so for free. Either the money will be transfered electronically using ACH, intrabank transfer or my bank will just write and mail a check to the person.
Re:Checks (Score:3, Informative)
What if I want to give someone money when I don't have an Internet connection? (Similarly with a wire - I can't believe that the OP of this thread thinks going into a bank is easier than just writing out a cheque, although maybe these things have different names in the UK to the US?)
Then you give him cash or tell him you transfer it from your bank account. Wire transfer (or it's closer to ACH I guess) everyone mostly does from Internet now a days. There's no need to go to bank just to transfer money (while it still of course is a possibility)
Or what if I don't have the security keypad device thing that my bank requires me to use? Or I don't have access to the strong passwords on me at that moment? What if the bank introduces new security measures, and you can't access the website until then (yes, mad as it sounds, Barclays pulled this one on me, when they started requiring the aforementioned keypad device things).
We use two level one-time pin lists. Other one is running one-time list to login to bank account, and the other one additional list to confirm payments. Secure and easy and there's no need to change it (and I can't understand why US banks don't use the same kind of system).
What if the website's "down for maintenance"?
They rarely are. If one bank happens to be down a few hours during night time it's usually mentioned in news too. Bank's aren't run off someones basement, you know.
What about liability? In the UK, there have been cases of people paying the wrong person, and it's their fault because they're the ones who typed it in - the recipient legally is entitled to the money.
It's illegal to keep money not send to you. If you're mistakenly send money to a wrong person and they haven't send it back, you contact bank and they contact the recipient (or his bank if it's not the same bank) and ask to send it back. Unless they do in reasonable amount of time, it's a criminal matter and will be liable if theres no good reason (ie., on holiday so didn't receive letter or call and so on)
Re:Why not all electronic? No really, why not? (Score:2, Informative)
What do you mean "soon?" (Score:2, Informative)
USAA customers have been able to do this with their mobile phones for quite a long time now. They've also been able to use scanners and software at home to do it for even longer (years).
Re:Checks (Score:3, Informative)
You're doing it wrong, then. The IRS sent my refund straight to my checking account, and it didn't cost a dime. All I did was fill in the routing and account numbers on my 1040. I could've had them cut a check and mail it to me, but the electronic transfer is faster. The full amount of the refund was deposited in my account, with nothing taken out for fees.
Re:Checks (Score:0, Informative)
What if I want to give someone money when I don't have an Internet connection? (Similarly with a wire - I can't believe that the OP of this thread thinks going into a bank is easier than just writing out a cheque, although maybe these things have different names in the UK to the US?) Or what if I don't have the security keypad device thing that my bank requires me to use? Or I don't have access to the strong passwords on me at that moment? What if the bank introduces new security measures, and you can't access the website until then (yes, mad as it sounds, Barclays pulled this one on me, when they started requiring the aforementioned keypad device things). What if the website's "down for maintenance"?
You use telephone banking.
Re:Checks (Score:1, Informative)
Here the electric company would probably charge extra for a check, it they accept it at all.
Re:Checks (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Checks (Score:1, Informative)
That's because the Credit Unions are protected by provincial equivalents of the CDIC (DICO for Ontario etc...). Protection is exactly the same.
Re:$25 to transfer money to a friend?! (Score:3, Informative)
They also don't have the concept of "direct debit". something that astounds me.
Every service that I need to pay for, from my gas utility, electric utility, student loan, and credit card bill can be paid directly at the company's website as a direct debt. I enter my routing and checking account numbers, and the bill gets deducted from my bank account.
I think you misunderstand what "Direct Debit" means in the UK. Direct Debit is basically a system where you authorise a company to withdraw money from your account each month. This is very similar to a standing order (where you instruct your bank "transfer X amount to another bank account on this day each week/month/year") except that for Direct Debits the amount to withdraw is determined by the recipient of the payment.
This means that my phone bill is automatically paid in full each month, even though it is not a fixed amount. I don't have to do anything after the DD is initially set up - no logging into the telco's website to organise the transfer each month, etc.
On the face of it, DD sounds like a security nightmare since you're basically authorising a third party to withdraw however much they like from your account. But it is backed by the direct debit guarantee, which is a legal requirement for the bank to protect you from fraudulent transactions and immediately refund you if there is any dispute. So from the consumer's point of view, the security is reasonable.
Pretty much all regular bill payments can be done by direct debit or standing order, so the need to actually go and pay it manually (whether that is by handing over cash, a cheque or organising an electronic transfer each month) is pretty much non-existent.
USAA Also Allows iPhone Deposits (Score:2, Informative)
USAA FTW (Score:2, Informative)
Re:$25 to transfer money to a friend?! (Score:3, Informative)
No, many companies have that over here in the US, especially the utilities, etc. I personally do NOT like this as that I don't like giving hardly anyone or any company direct access to my bank account.
However, many banks here are offering free bill pay from the banks website, where if the company is hooked to the 'system' (I forget the name) when I set up a bill to pay it is often transferred from the bank to the company electronically in about 1-2 days. If the bill to pay is a person or company not in their electronic system, the bank cuts them a physical check and mails it to them..free of charge.
As for automatic payments!??!
Eeek...not me. I like to see exactly what the bill is for everything, and pay the amounts out myself. Heck, what happens if you make a mistake in checking somehow...and your funds are lower than thought..and all those automatic bill payments come in and cause numerouse NSF (insufficient funds) penalties?? That can cost you serious cash since those can often be $25 - $39+ per overdraft.
Re:Checks (Score:1, Informative)
Very few US financial institutions still ship checks. Almost all use a Check 21 product. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Check_21_Act [wikipedia.org]