Today I Deposited A Cheque With My iPhone

I spent 30 minutes driving to an ATM yesterday to deposit a check. I could have stayed at home, if only I’d known my iPhone can now let me deposit cheques.

Apparently, sometime in June, the Chase iPhone App added functionality that lets you deposit a cheque by taking a snapshot of the front and back. It works well enough, even if doesn’t seem to want to use the touch-to-focus features of the iPhone. (It does wait until it thinks it has a clear shot before taking the snap, not unlike those apps designed to give you a clean shot in low light.)

There are limitations. You can only deposit up to $US1000 in a day and only $US3000 in a month, so depending on how your pay comes in, it might not be possible to the app instead of going to a bank.

Still. I deposited a cheque with my phone! There’s something very satisfying about actually doing something that we’ve known should be possible for a long time, even if it’s stripped of its zazz just a bit by the quotidian nature of actually holding the crumpled check in an unsteady hand.

(An aside: Chase is a horrible bank. I’ve actually started moving most of my money into a credit union account, but I’ve kept Chase around for the moment because for all its terrible, unfortunate, customer-last policies, I feel like it’s good to have a backup bank that has outlets in nearly every city. Maybe that’s naive!)