App allows clients easy way to deposit their cheques
Banking on the go is about to get a little easier.
Westminster Savings has become the first financial institution in Canada to roll out a service that lets its clients deposit cheques to their accounts using smartphones or other mobile devices.
While ING Direct Canada is pilottesting mobile phone cheque deposits and other Canadian banks are expected to offer similar services soon, Westminster Savings’ April 17 launch marks the first time such a service will be offered to all customers of a Canadian financial institution.
The new service, dubbed Deposit Anywhere, will be included with Westminster Savings’ mobile banking app downloadable through Apple’s app store, making it available for customers who have an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.
Credit union members who want to deposit a cheque will be able to log into the mobile banking app on their mobile device and take a photo of the front and the back of the cheque to be deposited. The member will select the account the cheque is to go into, enter the details of the cheque and send the information to the credit union. The money is deposited to the account and a confirmation number is sent to the customer.
While consumers in the United States have been able to deposit cheques via their mobile devices for a number of years, it has only been made possible in Canada with changes made last year by the Canadian Payments Association, the not- for- profit organization that operates and maintains the system of clearing and settlement of payments for Canada’s financial institutions.
“As soon as we knew that was on the table we started development,” said Ed Brett, assistant vice- president for product and channel management at Westminster Savings. “We really tried to take advantage of the agility that comes with our size.
“This is a natural move for us, our customers want us to provide convenient services.”
Westminster Savings is the first of three Canadian credit unions to enable cheque deposits on mobile devices. The other two, Meridian in Ontario and Affinity Credit Union in Saskatchewan, will add Deposit Anywhere to their mobile apps in May. Central 1 Credit Union, the trade association for credit unions in British Columbia and Ontario, said in an announcement Monday that the Deposit Anywhere service will be broadly available for credit unions to begin implementation this June.
“In the U. S. this was rolled out a number of years ago and it is used extensively but Canada has only recently moved down that path,” said Oscar van der Meer, chief technology and payment officer at Centre 1. “It is really not a technology issue, it is more that the rules have changed and it is only recently we have been able to do this.”
The mobile cheque deposit app doesn’t only make the process more efficient for consumers, who no longer will have to seek out an ATM or line up at their financial institution to deposit a cheque, it also streamlines the process for financial institutions. Under the current system, a cheque must be sent to a regional exchange point — Vancouver is one — where it is conveyed from one financial institution to another.
Shift that transfer to the digital space and the financial institution that is clearing the cheque will get it much faster.
“Essentially, it would be much quicker than depositing with an ATM because you don’t have the physical logistics that you would have with an ATM,” said van der Meer.
Deposit Anywhere will only accept Canadian cheques, although van der Meer said in future the service will be extended to include U. S. cheques.
Brett said about a third of West-minster Savings’ 50,000 members uses its online banking services. The credit union introduced its iOS app late last year and plans to develop an Android app later this year. Brett said the credit union is also considering an app for the new BlackBerry 10 operating system and will add that if there is enough demand.
Westminster Savings also has a web version of its online site that is optimized for mobile browsers so members who don’t have an Apple device can doing their online banking on mobile devices running Android, BlackBerry 10 or other mobile operating platforms, although the Deposit Anywhere function will only be available with the iOS app.