Mobile banking has long allowed customers more or less the same things that they could do from any internet-enabled computer: you can check your accounts, find ATMs, and pay bills. One US bank is now planning to change all that. USAA is going to allow qualifying customers to deposit checks right from the company’s iPhone application. All customers will have to do is take a picture of their checks with the iPhone camera. That’s it. The check should then be marked as void.
This and other aspects of mobile banking are really useful from a consumer perspective. With the ability to deposit your check from wherever you are, really the only money-related action that needs to be completed at a specific location is withdrawing money from an ATM. It’s a very freeing thing. Take for example the ability to talk to customer service via SMS or IM. If you’re doing all of this from an iPhone, the transaction can play out over time without messing up your day; you don’t have to call a call center and wait with your phone glued to your ear until someone responds.
From the bank’s perspective, all of this stuff saves resources. One analyst claims that for every customer service inquiry that occurs over text messaging instead of over the phone, banks save $14. This ads up to some pretty big savings given the volume of calls many banks are used to handling.
The real reason why mobile banking works is that the proliferation of capable mobile devices is now passed a threshold where it makes sense. Back in the day, there was a device called the Cue Cat which could scan barcodes right into your computer. The device failed miserable because the applications were too limited. But a smartphone is not just limited to being used to scan stuff – if the iPhone is any indication, we can use our phones to do even more than we can on standard computers. USAA is basically enabling the mobile deposit of checks because enough customers have devices which already make this action possible.
(Info via New York Times)
