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USAA, a financial-services company that primarily serves individuals in the military and their families, tomorrow will allow members to deposit checks using images of the drafts captured with an Apple iPhone camera, Paul Berry, a USAA spokesperson, tells ATM&Debit News, a CardLine sister publication. Apple will begin making the service available today through a downloadable application USAA developed in-house called deposit@mobile. To use the service, an iPhone owner activates USAA's mobile-banking application on their device. The phone's camera takes a photograph of the check, and the image is deposited into the person's bank account, Berry says. USAA will not reveal additional details about how the service works until its news conference Tuesday. The accountholder does not have to mail the actual check to USAA. The financial-services company developed deposit@mobile after successfully launching deposit@home three years earlier, Berry says. With deposit@home, USAA members use a scanner to scan a copy of the check. The member then uses personal computer to open USAA's mobile-banking application to electronically deposit the draft into their bank account. Deposit@mobile will make it easier for USAA's 7.2 million members to make bank deposits because many of them are stationed in all parts of the world. Berry, who appears in a Webcast demonstrating how deposit@mobile works, also hints that the service will affect ATM use. "One of the things that you will see in the Webcast is me accepting a $12.50 check from a friend for his portion of lunch," Berry says. "Instead of driving to a bank to deposit the check at an ATM, I deposited it with my iPhone while sitting the restaurant." USAA is developing a check-deposit application for the BlackBerry, the Palm Pre and Android phones, Berry says.
