Banks have hesitated to adopt technology that would let us scan paper checks at home for deposit. The Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act allows banks to exchange electronic images instead of paper checks, but USAA, a credit union associated with the military, is currently the only bank to offer customers a check scanning option. Sure, it’s easy enough to stand on line for a teller or wait for an ATM, but we fear sunshine and people and prefer to stay indoors, thank you. Assuming it was free, is this something you would use if it was offered by your bank? Vote in our poll, after the jump.
Scanning Your Money to the Bank [NYT]
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@bdude: Yes, rarely. Where do you live, Tomorrowland?
@angelman: Make electronic payment processing cost less for merchants, and you might get more support from business (especially small ones who don’t have as great a volume of transactions and pay higher fees)
(sarcasm) zomg Americans are such rubes with their checks!!!! snarf! (/sarcasm)
I don’t run into check-writing or receiving very often, but I do sometimes. I pay all my bills online except rent. I don’t know of any landlord or management company that lets you pay rent electronically. So for that, I do have to write a check. If my parents want to send me money for my birthday or whatever, they do so with a check since they’re not really up on the PayPal thing. My hairdresser gets dinged with credit card fees every time a customer pays with a card, so if I don’t have enough cash on me I pay with a check. So, Bdude, yes, people in America do still use checks.
Just so I have this straight. Buy a $400 scanner so that Americans won’t have to walk to a freaken’ ATM?
Jeezus, no wonder we’re a nation of lardbutts.
stand “on” line? Do you mean wait online, or stand “in” line? Is there an actual “line” that you stand on when waiting? What kind of language is that?! Dayum yankeh!
USAA isn’t the only one. A bank here in Jacksonville, FL offers it, too.
(above expatriate & Grizzly Adams excepted, ‘natch)
I love the USAA Deposit@Home, and I use it regularly. Even with direct deposit, I still receive a fair number of checks each year, and being able to immediately deposit them and immediately have access to the money is a HUGE benefit.
Of course, if banks would just set up an easier way to allow interbank Electronics Funds Transfers, checks wouldn’t be necessary, but every time I’ve tried a direct ETF, it’s a huge hassle that involves faxing them official requests, paying a transfer fee, etc. If someone has money to give me, they can just write me a check and it’s in my account in a matter of minutes, thanks to USAA’s Deposit@Home.
The only problem with USAA’s system is that I have to use the IE browser, it doesn’t seem to work right with firefox. But I can live with that. Oh, and the five thousand per day limit is a minor pain, I agree, but I should be so lucky to be receiving so many large checks…
Capital One is offering it to their small biz customers now.
humphrmi: Hear, Hear! Deposits are the only reason I go to the bank anymore. Now, if ING Direct were to start offering this, I would gleefully cancel my local branch account, and I’d make sure to cancel with the bastard that refused to credit me for the ridiculous overdraft fees that one time 3 years ago.
Um, how much would this in-home scanning technology cost?
@lovelygirl: I paid $40 for my scanner on eBay and USAA provides the service for free.
@trai_dep: When the nearest ATM for my bank is 600 miles away, yes.
Sure why not save me some time. of course id try a sample one a couple times for 40 bucks and then if i see after couple times id do full deposits lol.
@trai_dep said:Just so I have this straight. Buy a $400 scanner so that Americans won’t have to walk to a freaken’ ATM?
Jeezus, no wonder we’re a nation of lardbutts.
There are more reasons to need this service than laziness. When we were stationed overseas, there were no ATMs accessible to deposit checks. USAA and many other online banks do not have physical branches, the checks clear instantly meaning there is no hold on funds deposited this way, and there is no chance your deposit could get lost.
I have been using this ever since it came out and have not had a problem. I don’t see why people say that this shifts the burden onto the customer… as of right now, don’t you drive to the bank, wait in line, and then possibly wait a couple days for it to appear? Even if you mail it in you still use a stamp and have to wait at least 3 days. USAA still does the postage-paid deposit envelopes for those that think a couple minutes of time uploading checks is a colossal pain in the ass.
I haven’t used a check in nearly 4 years and I can’t think of the last time I cashed one myself. Probably something from my husband’s grandmother which actually was a money order, not a check.
Checks are too easy to fake. In general this is not a service that should be rolled out to the general public. Load up a TrueType MICR font on my windows PC and I’m good to go to print a check on anyone’s account.
For overseas customers of US banks who’ve opened accounts stateside and then gone abroad, it might be useful. It’s incredibly easy to transfer money OUT of
the USA through the local ATM machines but depositing it BACK is quite another story.
Bank by mail? US citizens take for granted a postal system that is efficient and doesn’t lose/steal things. In a lot of countries postal correspondence to an American bank is going to simply evaporate in transit with the contents somehow being misused.
That leaves FedEx and DHL – oh and Western Union or wire transfers. All of those are prohibitively expensive for an expat who earns their income overseas yet maintains US-based credit card accounts. SO easy to spend it, but making that payment is SO difficult.
However, in most foreign capitals its possible to buy a US check usually drawn on a New York account. It’s far cheaper than Western Union in most cases and you could conceivably buy your US check with local currency the same day as you scan and deposit it with your American bank. 3-5 days later it clears and you pay your stateside bills.
Banks should carefully vet and identify customers who get access to this service. Imagine the FLOOD of scanned checks emanating from Nigeria…
@randombob: That’s like saying printing postage online should always be done at the post office since they do the weighing and calculating how much you have to pay, yet it’s so inefficient people are WILLING to pay to print postage online and then just drop it off in the mail.
You have to consider the time you waste to go to the bank and you have to do it within bank hours, which usually close quite early and they only open 1/2 days on Saturday and is closed on Sunday. Same thing with the post office.
I can’t say I would use it. I’m far too broke to forsee a time when I wouldn’t need to get the initial $100 available upon cashing a check anytime soon.
Wachovia just started offering this service. I plan to try it out soon.
@SadSam: Really? Do you know if they have anything about in on the website? I couldn’t find it after a cursory glance, but if this exists I would be super-happy.
@CaptainSemantics: Wow, I am an idiot. It was right there on the homepage. It helps to look at the right side of the screen, too. lol
Hmm–I don’t have a problem going into the bank to make a deposit. Even with only checking accounts like Electric Orange (which I have been considering) I’d deposit a check into my local free checking bank and transfer the funds online (for free)–much safer than mailing.
I do know someone who refuses to do direct deposit. Ten years ago or so he signed up for it when it became available at his work–they messed up the first transaction–and he quickly unenrolled. That was enough for him to keep doing the paper check route all this time–and he gets paid weekly.
For me, my bank is in the same shopping center as my grocery store, my post office etc . . . it’s very convenient and easy for me to stop by the bank. My bank also offers a good interest rate on savings, it’s free, but if I moved then I can understand having to switch again.
@krunk4ever: That depends, like I wrote my bank is in the same shopping center as my grocery store and post office.
There’s another bank in the same shopping center (not mine but I know people who use it) that offers free checking, is open til 7pm M-F and is open on Sat and Sunday til 3pm.
These hours do not appear to be at every branch, but it’s nice to know there’s banks/branches that are realizing that people need better hours.
USAA is a federal bank, not a credit union.
My bank offers it, but for $50/month for my business account. Not worth it.
I’ve been doing this since USAA rolled it out and I love it! I’ve deposited personal checks, paychecks, crazy shaped refund checks from Staples, and many more.
The only problems I have ever had with it were when people have signed their names through the check routing numbers. If this is the case, the system recognizes the problem directs you to mail the check in for deposit. Of course since USAA rocks, you can just use the free prepaid envelopes. I make sure to keep a few on hand just incase.
If you are eligible for USAA and aren’t taking advantage of the banking, insurance, and many other services that they offer, then you are wasting money.
Just an FYI, I’ve been using the USAA deposit at home service since it started working with Macs, and the 5k limit isn’t set in stone. I had some checks that were slightly over, and I just called and they raised my limit to 10k. The new limit showed up on the account before I hung up with customer service.
@mstevens: Excellent point. The actual name is “USAA Federal Savings Bank”.
I like the idea of it. My daughter has a USAA account and when I need to give her money (I am homebound) it helps that she can deposit a check that way. My credit union is in another state so making deposits are difficult (I definitely don’t send them in the mail.) So I have a local savings account from which I can EFT money to the credit union when I need to. Fortunately, we don’t get checks ourselves very often. We do have auto-deposit for DH’s paychecks and I can’t imagine not having that since the mail is so unreliable. I do have to use checks for some things. Like – donations to the local volunteer EMT and fire stations. There are other times (usually one time situations) where credit cards and EFT’s don’t work.
@nrwfos: Edit – the other big reason that I have to have a savings account is that our FLEX medical card sends us checks for the times we can’t use the FLEX card and they re-emburse us. That is really annoying to my husband. They don’t seem to have an automatic deposit option.
@randombob: And, what in most cases you bank is charging you for.
The few instances where I need to deposit a check (Gifts, rebates, etc.) it’s not so hard to add a visit to the ATM after grocery shopping, renting a movie, or what have you.
Like the article states: “Some people will look at it as a great innovation, others as a solution to a problem they don’t have.” Count me in the latter.
It seems like a good solution to fix a select group of customers. From the article, I thought they were thinking of rolling it out to everyone, which doesn’t make a lot of sense. So, yay, free market!
@NoWin: Surprisingly, most business owners are uninterested. Why, is beyond me…
I find that hard to believe, because I’m also in banking and constantly setting up this service for clients. Granted, if you work with very small businesses the special scanners and fees might not be worth it, but in general, this is a pretty standard product for larger businesses. Anything to decrease the float time…
And my only complaint with the USAA service thus far has been rebate checks. Because a lot of rebate checks have blank backs, it doesn’t like that and wont let you submit them. I think of the 5 checks I get a year, that would disqualify 1 or 2 of them.
I business I do work for has started doing this. They have a little scanner/MICR reader. They get enough checks to make it worthwhile, but I think it would be cost prohibitive for home use or businesses that have a low check volume.
@Omi: There’s a little more to it than ust the scan. There is the MICR (Magnetic Ink Character Recognition) – those numbers on the bottom of the check aren’t printed with just any ordinary blank ink. The scanners use both optical and magnetic to read the check.
I’m actually implementing this for business customers at the bank I work for right now. Banks work with a vendor to provide the scanners and the software or web interface to their customers. Most of those remote deposit vendors are actively looking at the best way to offer/price this service for the individual market, and most banks who offer remote deposit to business customers are under a lot of pressure from the retail bank to figure it out, too. The biggest obstacle to consumer implementation is cost. To use a really good scanner with a really good track record of accurate OCR is expensive – in our case, a single-feed scanner (appropriate for most consumers) costs about $500, and a batch-feed scanner costs about $1100.
There is no regulatory “deposit limit” for remote deposits. If your bank is imposing a limit, it’s based on a set of rules they came up with themselves to mitigate risk, but the risks are vague at best. We require a user name and password that we control, as well as a password generating token to access the service. You can only deposit into accounts that we define in the system and have verified, and our fraud/security folks automatically eyeball any deposit over a certain limit regardless of the deposit channel. You cannot add a new account for deposits in the service, nor can you create an additional user in the service. Really, the big risk as we see it is user error, i.e., accidentally depositing a check via the branch or an ATM that you’ve already scanned via the service, and there’s no way (at our bank) to be able to tell that’s happening until the check is returned. We address this by signing a legal agreement with our business customers stating that any shenanigans (accidental OR fraudulent) are completely and totally their responsibility, so as to encourage adherence to best practices and security.
I own a business and cur myself a salary check every two weeks. Since USAA is my bank (btw, not a credit union…) I simply drew a check in photoshop and I send them the image whenever I want to get paid. The whole process takes me about 30 seconds and my deposit is available immediately.
USAA is an absolutely incredible bank and I highly recommend it to anyone who can get in.
They also have great customer service, free financial advisors, they fully refund ATM charges, and they accommodate you in whatever way possible.
@GoghUA:
I feel like every time there is an article about USAA here, people start posting all these great stories and how we should all join if eligible.
Yes, USAA has great products and great service. Their CSR reps are top notch and they take rudeness complaints very seriously. However, their products are not necessarily the cheapest. It does pay to shop around.
In my family’s case, we switched our auto insurance (after 28 or so continuous years with USAA) to another provider you see on TV and we save roughly $800 a year and get MORE coverage than USAA’s rates. When we switched USAA would not match the rate. They were friendly about it, so I’ll give them that. Also, we have zero accidents, zero tickets, and pay all bills on time. IOW, the PERFECT insurance customer. I have several good buddies that are officers right now, and I tell them this same bit of info. Shop around and don’t buy into the USAA is by far the cheapest lie.
Also, USAA’s mutual funds expense ratio hovers just above 1% (usually 1.05% plus or minus .01%). Most of their competitors (i.e. Vanguard, Fidelity, Merril Lynch, etc.) have expense ratios from 0.55% to 0.75%.
USAA is a world class company to be a member of and work for. However, I feel like some of their products are competitive and better than industry average, however others are below industry average. It’s kind of like a retail store which attracts you with the ads and hopes you end up buying other goods which are the real bread & butter of their operation.
I for one, welcome our new USAA overlords!
(I usually try to deposit my check online, but I have problems with firefox and some add-ons). IE7 works most of the time.)
Yes! Computers are rad and control all our money anyways. Why not let them eat it while the money is more fresh? Gnom Gnom Gnom. Then I can setup alerts that say “You haven’t fed me a check in a while, why don’t you make more money?”
@aphex242 & @drgirlfriend: Wow, in Australia the main use for cheques is when paying large amounts of money in person – my bank charges me $7.50 for a cheque. Most people either withdraw at an ATM or use EFTPOS.
Voted maybe. I’m not sure how secure that would be. If it were anything other than money, I would be saying Yes. When money gets involved, risk increases exponentially for new technology.
Bad code for a word-processor? At most it ruins my computer and I go to a back-up. Bad code for a scanned check transfer? I lose all my money and have to deal with bureaucrat after bureaucrat to get my money back.
I’ll try it after it has been implemented for a few years.
Ermm.. Why do it at home?
Roughly 25% of the ATM branches here in Hong Kong already have check and cash deposit machines.
But who needs checks anyway – let’s all push for direct deposit!
@ralphie99:
USAA Deposit@Home works great in Safari/Mac. I use Firefox primarily so it’s a small hassle, but I can live w/it.
My credit union only exists in California, I currently live in Georgia, I can deposit at Co-Op atms but would much prefer the ability to scan at home.
I’m a USAA customer and I LOVE scanning my checks. I haven’t been to a bank in almost a year now. This is just one more reason why I love USAA.
YES! Never having to fill out those deposit slips (cause I don’t want to buy new checks just to get more personalized deposit slips) would be amazing.
I wish we’d just skip the checks entirely and go electronic like the rest of the world has done already. It’d also be nice to get away from the excessive 2-3% transaction fees the credit card co’s charge for each transaction as well.
@missbehave: Not sure about your bank, but Wachovia offers books of pre-printed deposit slips. Have a pile of ‘em here.