Chase Quick Deposit Lets You Make Deposits from iPhone

You might have seen the commercial where a guy sitting in a chair uses his iPhone and a Chase Quick Deposit app to take a picture of a check and deposit it via his phone. No trip to the branch required. I saw the commercial the other night and was instantly intrigued. When I worked in the online banking divisions at both Fleet Bank and Bank of America, we always considered check deposits to be one of the barriers to true electronic banking. Most people don't like to snail mail their checks to be deposited. Now, Chase seems to be put a nifty app together that solves that problem.

I decided to give the app a try to see if it really worked. I installed the app on my phone (it's available on the iPhone and Android operating systems), went through the validation process and then followed the instructions to take a picture of the front and back of a check. I pressed submit. Amazingly, it worked fine. A day later the funds were deposited into my account. In sixty seconds I had made a deposit that would have taken me thirty minutes or more to do in the past. Nice.

There are currently some deposit limits with the app. Consumers can only deposit $1,000 per day or $3,000 per weak using the app. Hopefully this limit will increase over time.

This is pretty significant. No doubt other banks will soon have similar apps available. Once they do, there is really no limit to true online banking. With this app, an online banking account, and a debit card, a consumer can open an account from any bank in the country and be able to easily deposit, withdraw, and manage their money. Branches would seem to become far less important for everyday banking, eliminating a major hurdle to online bank adoption.

Interestingly, Chase seems to be pursuing a dual strategy, bulking up its online banking while also indicating it plans to open more than 1,000 new branches over the next three years. I suspect branches will become more focused on investment and lending products while core deposit banking continues to shift online.

Kudos to the online banking folks at Chase.