In the near future, you might not even have to visit a bank or an ATM to deposit a check. You'll simply snap a couple of photos of it with your cell phone.

Applications for that purpose are already available from USAA, a company that provides insurance and banking mainly for military veterans, for Apple Inc.'s iPhone and other mobile devices. JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and Citibank are among the banks planning to release similar applications this year.

Details.

[So, next thing we need to do is start tracing the computer/internet path of a digital check? Right.]

Although the technology, known as remote-deposit capture, promises to save consumers time, it adds a new wrinkle to concerns about fraud and the privacy of financial data.

"a new wrinkle"

Cue Mr. Edmonds

Airlines (at least American) allow you to have your boarding pass on your phone. They literally take your phone with the boarding pass barcode on the screen and scan it under the same scanner.
Mobile boarding passes
Good thing American returns boarding passes to the customer.

If you intend to seek reimbursement for that flight, some organizations require you to provide the tear-off portion of the boarding pass, thereby proving you got on the plane. Not so good for the paperless world.

I guess you could photocopy your iPhone or Blackberry.

Actually, you can take a snapshot of any screen on an iPhone by simultaneously pressing the power and home buttons, then going to the Photos app to find the image. Then could e-mail that image to include as support for reimbursement.

On my second try, I actually managed to successfully photograph and deposit a check of mine this way. But as I was doing it, I did briefly wonder how this might affect prosecuting forgery cases.

Very strange. Photographed front and back of check?

How does bank know you are photographing back of same check?

JB--You take a picture of the front, and then a second picture of the back. Whatever scanning program they have thinks about each for quite a while, then tells you if your picture's acceptable or not (and it's not easy to get the pictures the way they want them).

As to the front and back of the same check issue, I guess that would be a presumption on their part. It's definitely a little strange, and rather time-consuming (it took me two separate tries and probably a total of about fifteen minutes to get one check deposited). USAA provides postage-paid envelopes to mail in your deposits, so unless you're just really into technological stuff like this for its own sake, it's actually easier to just do it by mail if you don't need immediate access to the money.

Apple really should sponsor our website -y'all are really making an iPhone sound pretty cool.

quote:

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Originally posted by CFR:
Although the technology, known as remote-deposit capture, promises to save consumers time, it adds a new wrinkle to concerns about fraud and the privacy of financial data.

"a new wrinkle"

Cue Mr. Edmonds

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I have no doubt that the financial institutions have studied the issue in depth and reached a simple business conclusion--they stand to save more in transaction costs than they will lose to new fraud, so they have gone forward with this new, less prosecutable form of transaction.

To which I say to them, "caveat emptor."

The other question for prosecutors in Texas is, how will this affect hot check collections that are used (in part) to fund many of your offices?

I have to wonder why we keep hanging on to the use of a piece of paper (check) as the means for conducting business.