Deposit A Check With Your Phone's CameraDeposit A Check With Your Phone's Camera

You may be able to deposit checks to your bank account soon just by snapping a picture of the check and sending it to your bank. In fact, if you bank at USAA, a bank primarily for military personnel, you can do it already. This will be one less reason to have to go to an ATM or local branch.I think most people have direct deposit for their paychecks, or at least have that option available, but if your family is like mine, you still seem to get checks from a variety of people each month. According to this CNBC article, Chase and Citi are working on the technology and plan to roll it out to users this year.

For it to work, you just snap a photo of the front and back of the check and send it to your bank. Depending on your account status, the money may be available immediately. The downside is this doesn't work with any phone. Right now they are working on iPhone, Android and Blackberry versions, which means there is proprietary software involved. It isn't just a matter of sending a JPG to a special email address.

This would be especially useful for banks that have no branches. USAA is one of those, which is one reason they have already rolled it out. I'd like to see branchless banks that are open to the general public, not just the military, also jump into this, like Schwab Bank and ING Direct. Even if you use a bank that seems to have a branch on every corner, it would still be nice to just snap a pic of a birthday check from your Aunt Flo and electronically deposit it rather than have to take a few minutes out of your day.