Check it out, is this for real?

Last year, USAA, a mid-sized American bank, was going to provide the technology to virtually deposit checks using a scanner and Wi-Fi.

A year and a half later, USAA is the first out of the gate with an iPhone app that offers the convenient option of depositing checks by taking a picture of each side with your phone’s camera. A touch of the send button emails it to the bank, and the paper check can then be disposed of.

The simplicity of this app will no doubt send competitors in banking and mobile alike scrambling for solutions as efficient as this one.”

It’s no wonder the American banking system is in such a mess if this is the kind of function they deem to be ‘efficient’.
 

At first I thought it was a joke but no, I was wrong, they are deadly serious. This is a first world economy that appears to be going backwards, rapidly.
 

The headline of the article is spot on: “Bank Lets You Point, Shoot and Deposit Checks With an iPhone”
 

Who ever came up with the App and the person or persons in the USAA bank should in my opinion, and it’s only my opinion, be “pointed out, shot and then deposited.”
 

This has to be one of the most ‘insane’ ways of utilising mobile banking. First of all you will need an iPhone (don’t you just hate the sound of that already?) next you need someone to hand write a cheque (it’s only a ‘check’ in America). Then you need to use your iPhone to scan, not just one side of the cheque but both sides. Then you need to email it from your iPhone to your bank where it will be deposited and according to the article you can then do what you like with the original. I can just hear the South African Banking system cringe as they read this.

My first question is: how long will it take to clear and will it give the fraudsters enough time to do multiple deposits?
 

My second question is: Haven’t the Americans heard of secure mobile banking via SMS?

My third question is: Does anybody outside of America really care? It’s a totally bankrupt economy anyway. ($2.5 Trillion to be exact!)
 

So let’s be clear here, The USA is a first world super power and South Africa and indeed Africa is a third world economy. Yet South Africa and many other African countries are light years ahead of the Americans and Europeans in secure mobile banking.
 

I have just come from a seminar in Cape Town, where the guest speaker was Hannes van Rensburg, CEO of Fundamo, one of the world’s leading companies in mobile banking platforms and software architecture. He too had read the article on this iPhone application and mentioned it much to the amusement of those assembled.
 

This is an absurd application when one considers that it still requires two people to physically meet, exchange a paper cheque, scan both sides of the piece of paper, even although one side is blank, and then attach the scan to an email and send it to your chosen bank account. It’s a mission. It’s not green. It’s not convenient. It requires an iPhone.
 

Whereas in Africa we simply use a mobile wallet account that is a fully functional and secure account that the consumer can use for convenient and secure payments from a mobile handset. Combined with a payment card, the mobile wallet is used as a purchasing account and person-to-person payment tool. This does away with the need for face-to-face paper transactions and reflects in the recipients account almost instantly. Both payer and payee get immediate SMS alerts that show the transaction and all done in seconds.
 

In my view, Apple should stick to iTunes although South Africans can’t access the iTunes store because the South African Banks have strict policies on money transactions unlike the Americans.