Though USAA Federal Savings Bank first showed mobile RDC leadership a couple of years back, yesterday the bank further demonstrated just how much it values offering customers remote deposits. In short, that “how much” is a lot for USAA.
Indeed, USAA announced that it partnered with more than 1,900 UPS Store locations to allow USAA’s checking and/or savings customers to deposit their checks while shipping their packages, or whatever other reason brings them to UPS.
Billed as “USAA Easy Deposit,” the free service seems easy enough to use after viewing the financial institution’s demo video. Simply, a USAA customer enters a participating store, hands over his plastic banking card and paper check to an associate who swipes the card, selects the account to make the deposit into and scans in the check. Customers don’t need their account number, PIN or a deposit slip to get the deposit job done.
We think rolling out retail remote deposits is a very smart move considering that customers already have a healthy want appetite for remote deposits of any kind. Plus, knocking out two somewhat obnoxious tasks at one location is the definition of practical bliss, and fuels my enthusiasm for less painful ways to take care of deposits. Indeed, data from our upcoming Bank Innovation Monitor research service, to launch next week, shows that not only do a healthy amount of consumers long for mobile remote deposit services, but mobile RDC is the No. 1 service consumers desire. Indeed, 16% of Monitor’s respondents said they have an interest in their financial services providers empowering them with technology to deposit checks by sending a photo via their cell phones. Now, 16% is not a huge rate, but we see that percentage with a glass-half-full perspective since mobile RDC is a greatly new service and technology. We’re betting that 16% will grow vastly in the coming months.
USAA, our hats off to you.