Deposit Checks Through Your iPhone With The New Chase App

You've probably seen the commercials, heard the buzz here and there. Chase recently updated their otherwise under-whelming iPhone app.  This update alone makes it 200% better and begins to solve one of my personal annoyances... running bank errands.  Now you can actually deposit checks through your iPhone!   It works great, but it's not perfect. I did this the other day, let's take a look.

The way it works is actually very simple. I think Chase did a solid job with the UX and flow, guiding you along so there's little room for user error.  Here's how it works, and my personal experience...

Step 1:  Download the app if you haven't yet, and log on with your online account info. Pretty simple.

Step 2:  Tap the "Deposit" icon at the bottom to start the process.

Step 3:  Select the account you want to deposit into.

Step 4:  Add the check dollar amount.
Bummer alert!  As of October 2011, You can only deposit checks under $2000, and a maximum of $5000 per month.  Shoot, that sucks, but luckily this time I have a small check, so I can continue.

Step 5:  Take photo of the front & back of your check.  
I had to do this 2 or 3 times.  You have to be very still when you snap the pic.  The software scans your photo real-time and confirms the amount you entered.  This is a very cool feature to avoid user errors, but requires a  steady hand to produce a clean crisp photo.  The first two times my photo wasn't good enough and it scanned the wrong amount. Third time was a charm.

Step 6:  Tap "Next" to confirm and deposit.  Done!
It showed up in my online banking as a pending deposit immediately after I finished. That was reassuring.

This is actually a really cool feature, very easy to use... and the best part is that it works.  My only real complaint is the dollar amount restriction, which I assume is there for security reasons since this is a new feature. I imagine (hope!) they will slowly increase that over time as they become more confident in the security.  

Anyhow, it's pretty great overall. I've also heard that the USAA app has already been doing this for a while, but I haven't yet tried their process.   The future of banking is in your iPhone, who knew?!