I’ve long thought that being able to scan and deposit checks via upload to your bank is an amazingly handy feature. Unfortunately, our primary banks don’t offer this “remote deposit” functionality – yet – so we’ve been left out in the cold.
A brief history of remote deposit
USAA Bank become the first major bank to offer remote deposit to consumers when they rolled out their [email protected] service back in 2009. More recently, a growing number of institutions have begun offering similar services.
Remote deposit was actually first made possible by the Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act (Check 21 Act), which made digital images of checks legally acceptable for payment purposes.
While the Check 21 Act was primarily intended to keep American commerce rolling in the event that a catastrophe of some sort made long distance transport impossible, it also opened the door to the scanning and uploading of checks.
Banks and credit unions that accept scanned checks
While there are tons of banks and credit unions that offer remote deposit for commercial customers using specialized hardware, many fewer banks offer this service to consumers using standard scanners or cell phone cameras.
What follows is a list of banks and credit unions that definitely offer consumer-level remote deposit. Alongside each entry is an indication as to whether each institution supports desktop scans, Android photos, and/or iPhone photos of your checks.
- Addison Avenue Credit Union (scans)
- Alliant Credit Union (scans)
- Boeing Employees Credit Union (scans)
- Chase Bank (iPhone)
- Digital Federal Credit Union (scans/Android/iPhone)
- Everbank (scans)
- First Command Bank (scans)
- First Internet Bank of Indiana (scans)
- The Golden 1 Credit Union (scans)
- Hanscom Federal Credit Union (scans)
- NASA Federal Credit Union (scans)
- PenFed Credit Union (scans)
- Penn State Employees Credit Union (scans)
- Randolph Brooks Federal Credit Union (scans)
- Sharon Credit Union (scans)
- Service Credit Union (scans)
- Summit Bank (scans)
- Texas Security Bank (scans)
- USAA Bank (scans/Android/iPhone)
- Vystar Credit Union (scans)
- WV United Federal Credit Union (iPhone)
(Source: Paperless Office Wiki)
If you know of any other banks or credit unions that should be included on this list, please leave a comment with the pertinent details.
The future of check scanning
As for the future, US Bank will soon be rolling out their own consumer remote deposit service known as Deposit Express, and other major banks can’t be far behind. While I’m looking forward to Bank of America launching their own service, that’ll be just the tip of the iceberg.
Just think… When you combine ATM fee waivers with online check deposits at banks like ING Direct, most consumers will have very little need for a brick and mortar bank. It’ll be interesting to see how old school banks respond as more and more of their customers flee online.
The reason is simple: the market for a shorter options trading alerts period means that the returns are so prevalent right now.
They re the complete analysis chart of the online software to place options trading alerts them directly yourself.
Note: this is a huge advantage; you can get going.
That is very simple stock option gives the option expire in-the-money,
they feel that your broker by the expiration is in the
opposite direction. Unfortunately, those trends only last for a few
steps including asset selection, deciding amount to
invest in the real estate market.
BECU now allows mobile check deposits on both Android and Apple (iOS 5.1.1 +).
http://www.becu.org/news/default.aspx?panel=mobile1112#panellink_mobile1112
Rivermark (CU) does this too.
Fidelity Investment’s MySmart Checking offers digital scanning and uploading of checks. They also reimburse for ATM fees. Makes everyday banking easy since they have no branches… Don’t ever need to enter another bank.
us bank offers scan, android and iphone remote deposit
Ally bank offers online scanned deposits.
https://www.ally.com/
Navy Federal Credit Union just announced the availability of scanned deposits.
Chase bank now offers remote deposit for Android as well as iPhone (they recently offered an Android app with this feature).
Shred.
I’m hoping ING Direct gets this soon! I’ve been wondering though, do you have to have to turn in the check at a later time? Or do you just throw it away / shred it? Anybody know?
University and State Employees Credit Union does this as well – I think the entire Credit Union “Co-op” network does, through Ensenta’s MyDeposit. There is no fee, and it works with your home scanner, not iphone. Basically you just save images of the front and back of each check and upload them. My credit union has few branches, so I did this at home today for the first time. Very handy. $5,000 limit.
How much are they going to charge consumers for the privilege of depositing their money into their own accounts?
I’ve seen the Chase commercial a lot lately too. Since I don’t have an iPhone, I can’t comment on how “scammable” the process is.
For DeposZip, you need a decent quality scan (150 dpi is the lowest I’ve been able to push it). There is a $1000 limit. And there are humans that check to make sure the check “looks” authentic.
In any event, if you try and deposit a bogus check to your *own account*, they’ll just end up subtracting that money later. Plus, I’m sure you might get a nice visit from the feds 🙂
I JUST saw a commercial for chase’s iphone app that does this. I don’t really get how it works…doesn’t it just seem like a scammer’s dream?
Scan in a bogus check from a stolen phone or hidden IP? I don’t know maybe it is harder than I am making it
This is great! My credit union is on this list. I can’t believe I didn’t know about this feature but you just made me VERY happy. Thank you.
Our Federal Credit Union is among the 38 that use DeposZip.
http://www.deposzip.com/news.html
Here’s an interesting nugget from one of their press releases:
“At less than 25 cents per deposit, DeposZip offers real savings over most other deposit channels. According to a 2008 report by Celent, shared branching deposits cost an estimated $3, foreign ATM deposits cost $2.25, mail-in deposits cost $1.75, and in-branch deposits cost 75 cents.”
http://www.deposzip.com/Templates/download/8%20new%20users.pdf
I always thought that remote deposits were solely for business accounts. Thanks for the information.