USAA and BofA swap patent rights in first two-way deal

• Key insight: The Bank of America agreement is the first bilateral agreement in USAA's licensing campaign. Every earlier deal had another institution paying for a license to USAA's patents.
• Supporting data: Bank of America holds nearly 7,400 granted patents and pending applications, which it calls the most of any financial services company. USAA advertises more than 2,200 issued patents.
• Forward look: USAA said it wants more agreements like this one, with other banks and credit unions.

Overview bullets generated by AI with editorial review.

Starting in 2017, every bank that let its customers deposit checks via mobile app could count on USAA demanding the bank pay up. The company claims it owns the patents on the idea of depositing a check by photographing it.

On Tuesday, Bank of America announced a different kind of deal with USAA: a patent cross-license, which gives each the right to use what the other has invented.

The agreement covers "each other's entire patent portfolios" rather than any one technology, a Bank of America spokesperson told American Banker. Neither company would say how many patents that is.

The wide scope is different for USAA. Earlier agreements the company struck covered only mobile check deposit, which USAA says it invented, and it has argued in its announcements and in court that any bank offering it needs to buy a license to do so.

USAA has sued six banks over the technology, according to federal court records reviewed by American Banker: Wells Fargo, PNC, BBVA USA, Truist, Regions and Fifth Third (which it sued last month).

USAA "invented mobile remote deposit capture to better serve our members in the military community," a spokesperson told American Banker on Tuesday, and USAA continues "to protect our RDC portfolio – which consists of more than 180 patents beyond those considered in prior litigation."

USAA wants more agreements like the one it struck with BofA; the company looks forward "to working with other banks and credit unions to create mutually beneficial licensing agreements, just as we have done with Bank of America," said Mike Chaparro, an investments principal at USAA, in the announcement.

Licenses as settlement

Before Tuesday, four institutions had gotten licenses to USAA's patents. Discover, Esquire Bank, First Citizens and Truist all signed agreements between 2023 and 2024. Truist obtained its license as part of a 2023 settlement.

USAA counted the patents in those deals when it announced them. Discover took a license to more than 130; Esquire took one to more than 151.

USAA has never publicly said what these licenses cost. In its announcement of the Truist license, it said the terms of that deal "are not public."

All four of those deals were one-way; another institution licensed the right to use USAA's patents. The new one with Bank of America is a trade. (Spokespeople for USAA and Bank of America declined to say whether either company paid the other as part of that trade.)

There is also no public record of USAA ever suing Bank of America, and spokespeople for the two companies did not say whether USAA had privately asserted its patents against Bank of America before the two sides reached the deal announced Tuesday.

USAA had sent letters to "a couple hundred banks," mostly in the medium-to-large asset range, by the time it announced the campaign in May 2017, Neff Hudson, then a vice president of corporate development at the company, told American Banker.

Hudson said then that the company preferred to settle the matter through licensing fees rather than in court, and that it would "take as long as we need." Its first lawsuits came the next year.

The bank with the most patents has no record of asserting them

Bank of America holds nearly 7,400 granted patents and pending applications, "the most U.S. granted patents of any financial services company," the bank said in April 2025.

(By comparison, USAA's corporate development arm advertises more than 2,200 issued patents.)

A portfolio the size of Bank of America's would be leverage in most patent negotiations, but there is no public record of the bank ever asserting a patent against anyone.

American Banker reviewed the bank's patent litigation; Bank of America turns up in dozens of patent cases, nearly always as the defendant. In the cases where Bank of America is the plaintiff, it was asking a court to rule that it did not infringe someone else's patent.

The pattern holds at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, where a company can ask the government to cancel a patent it has already granted. Bank of America has filed 15 such challenges against other companies, according to the board's public records. It has never had to defend one of its own.

Although the bank is not publicly litigious about its patents, it does protect them. Specifically, it publishes a list of them, which would let it collect damages for infringement that happened before it filed suit.