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NetBank Signs First QuickPost Customer Wells Offers Kids Interaction, Education Fed Pushes ACH with Banco de Mexico XXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXX
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NetBank Signs First QuickPost Customer
NetBank Inc. of Alpharetta, Ga., has landed its first customer for its QuickPost overnight deposit service.
It said Tuesday that the branchless USAA Federal Savings Bank of San Antonio, a unit of United Services Automobile Association, would begin a 60- to 90-day test of the service in October.
NetBank's Financial Technologies Inc. operates QuickPost, which enables customers to submit deposits for free using United Parcel Service Inc.'s overnight courier service. NetBank introduced the service in March for its own banking customers; last month about 22% of the deposits that it received by mail -and 32% of the funds - came through QuickPost.
Tom Cable, Financial Technologies' president, said that customers can use any of the nearly 4,000 UPS Store outlets in the United States and that so far they have sent deposits from more than 3,500 of them. Nearly three-quarters of Americans live within five miles of a UPS Store, he said.
Traditional retail banks' customers can make deposits at branches, but Mr. Cable said the lack of branches makes it harder for people to access their accounts at online banks.
USAA's bank "has the same sort of challenge with getting deposits" as NetBank, he said. The QuickPost service "makes a lot of sense for a financial institution like NetBank or USAA."
Mr. Cable said customers of participating banks will eventually associate the UPS logo with financial services, just as people now understand that they can use any ATM carrying the logo of a network in which their bank is a member even though the machine may not bear their own bank's name.
Wells Offers Kids Interaction, Education
Wells Fargo & Co. is in the third week of a two-city test of Stagecoach Island, an interactive Web site designed to teach young people how to manage their money.
"Stagecoach Island is a contemporary platform where we can educate young people about one of the most important topics to their future success - their finances," said Sylvia Reynolds, Wells' chief marketing officer, in a press release issued last week.
The Web site is a virtual reality world with a financial theme, where players can earn, save, and spend money. Though some of the games and activities are free, others require virtual cash, such as shopping for digital clothes or the cover charge to enter an online dance club.
Stagecoach Island uses software from Linden Research Inc. of San Francisco, the creator of the online game Second Life. It is part of the San Francisco-based banking company's "We Take the Fun of Money Seriously" campaign, which is scheduled to run through October in Austin and San Diego.
The pilot program for Stagecoach Island is to last until mid-November.
Fed Pushes ACH with Banco de Mexico
The Federal Reserve Banks have partnered with Banco de Mexico to promote the Fed banks' automated clearing house payment service.
The Fed said last week that it would offer the Spanish-language Directo a Mexico marketing materials to U.S. banks, to help them win a bigger share of the large and growing market for remittances to Mexico.
The Fed said that the value of remittances sent from the United States to Mexico has increased at double-digit percentage rates in each of the past five years and that it topped $16 billion in 2004. About 25 million people of Mexican origin live in the United States, and about 5 million regularly send money home.
However, Elizabeth McQuerry, an assistant vice president with the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta's retail payments office, said in a press release issued Sept. 15 that U.S. banks and credit unions "account for no more than 3% of remittances to Latin America."
The Fed began permitting U.S. banks to send ACH payments to Banco de Mexico in February 2004. Volume to date has been low; in April the Fed said it was sending about 24,000 ACH payments monthly to Mexico, most of which were routed to U.S. retirees living in Mexico who had opted to receive their Social Security payments by direct deposit.
In July the Fed began offering one-day settlement for ACH payments sent to Mexico.
The funds are routed from U.S. banks to Banco de Mexico, the country's central bank, which acts as a gateway and can forward the payment to any bank in Mexico.
