I have to hand it to the folks at USAA. They are ahead of the game in every respect. They have released a mobile application that allows you to deposit a check using your cell phone! For over a year, they have had an application that allows customers to deposit checks using a computer and a scanner. This has been incredibly helpful as they do not have local branches.
This is relatively straight forward technology has been made possible because of the switch in the banking industry to “check truncation.” In the old days, seven years ago, the physical check was sent from the recipient’s bank back to the check writer’s bank. This was a laborious task that took a lot of resources to manage all of those paper checks. Under the check truncation process, an electronic image of the check is deemed just as good, so once a bank has an image of the check, they can destroy the original.
However, under their new application (currently only available for iPhone and Android devices), a customer simply takes a picture of the check and it is deposited into their account. I have yet to use this technology, but it would certainly help around my house as checks often sit attached to our refrigerator waiting to go upstairs to the scanner for deposit. You can watch a YouTube video of this process here.
I have yet to use this application myself being a Blackberry owner, but USAA’s website promises a Blackberry version soon. If you have used the application to deposit a check, please drop me a line. I’m anxious to know how it worked for you.
