Two apps are better than one when launching mobile check-deposit services, at least for now, some banks say.
Smaller banks are seeking to capitalize on the attention bigger ones such as JPMorgan Chase & Co. and USAA Federal Savings Bank have generated for mobile deposit. But they are learning that an integrated experience may not be possible to get the function out in a timely manner.
Adding the capability to an existing mobile-banking application that allows a customer to check balances and pay bills can involve months of integration work, even if the services are coming from the same vendor. The complexity is prompting some banks to release a separate app solely for remote deposit capture.
“We wanted to be one of the first, if not the first, in our footprints” to offer mobile check-capture, says Alex Jimenez, senior vice president and director of deposit operations and alternative delivery for Rockland (Mass.) Trust Co.
The $4.7 billion-asset unit of Independent Bank Corp. in January released a stand-alone app for Apple Inc.’s iPhone and iPod touch called Rockland Trust mDeposit that enables consumers to deposit checks by capturing their images with the cameras on the devices. The feature is separate from the more conventional banking app the bank released last week for the Apple products and for Research In Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry devices and phones running on Google Inc.’s Android operating system.
“It will be part of our overall mobile-banking app but it’s going to be introduced some time later this year, and we wanted to have it quicker than that,” Jimenez says.
Rockland is not alone. A few banks have also released apps solely for check depositing, and several vendors say they expect that number to grow as they complete technical work necessary for banks to offer the capability as part of full-feature apps.
Teresa Epperson, who studies mobile-banking trends as a partner with Mercatus LLC in Boston, says she is not surprised that a “speed-to-market” mentality is driving banks’ decision-making.
“Banks like Rockland Trust are seeing the interest from their customers,” Epperson says. “They see the opportunity in the marketplace today to get out there with mobile capabilities, and mobile [remote deposit capture] is probably the best example of a really tangible mobile offering that can add tremendous convenience to interacting with one’s bank.”
Smaller banks and credit unions, especially, have a window of opportunity to attract customers because few banks offer mobile check depositing, Epperson adds.
Douglas Brown, senior vice president of mobile financial services at the Jacksonville, Fla.-based Fidelity National Information Services Inc., or FIS, which worked with Rockland on all of its apps, says “our go-to-market approach here is to make remote deposit capture available right now as an application that can be run in a standalone model.”
Later in the first quarter FIS will have remote deposit capture integrated into the mobile platform it offers to banks, he adds.
In the long term, consumers will be looking for a more-integrated mobile-banking experience, which means banks will need to work with their vendors to combine the features into a single app, Epperson says.
Banks risk confusing consumers by taking a duel approach. For example, Rockland’s mDeposit app requires separate log-in credentials from its other iPhone app.
“It’s not as desirable to have that fractured experience, but if you were a financial institution that was trying to brand yourself as an innovator … and you see a potential hit in mobile remote deposit capture, time is money,” says Mark Schwanhausser, a senior analyst with Javelin Strategy and Research in Pleasanton, Calif.
Vendor mFoundry Inc., which worked with Rockland on its mobile-banking apps but not its mobile remote deposit app, has seen a lot of demand from smaller banks and credit unions that want to release standalone mobile check-deposit apps, with the end goal being to add the service later to more-traditional mobile-banking apps, says Drew Sievers, the Larkspur, Calif.-based company’s chief executive.
“In general, it’s always better to have a single application, a single place, for your customer base to go,” Sievers says.
For banks that have no mobile-banking apps, going with a mobile [remote deposit capture] app is quicker to develop because it requires less back-end integration, Sievers says.
“With remote deposit capture, you don’t have to integrate into a core system, a bill-pay system, a find-an-ATM system, a peer-to-peer [payments] system–all of those different systems that mobile banking encompasses,” Sievers says.
Also challenging vendors offering mobile-deposit platforms to banks is the need to integrate with other third-party mobile-banking software clients may be using.
“That’s not trivial to have parties come together and actually provide that integration,” says Gary Brand, director of source capture optimization at Brookfield, Wis.-based Fiserv Inc. “In some cases it’s timely, and in some cases there’s a lot of custom code that might have to be written.”
Fiserv has worked with some banks on releasing standalone mobile-deposit apps and is performing integration work to its own mobile-banking platforms to offer it as a combined service later this year, Brand says. Such work also may require a significant financial investment from the bank or credit union, he adds.
In some scenarios, a dual approach may be more beneficial, Brand says. For instance, small businesses may want their employees to have the ability to deposit checks but not to access full account data, he says.
