By Sarah Stone

Affinity creates mobile app for cheque deposits

Jun 21, 2013 | 11:52 AM

Affinity Credit Union is making use of society’s dependence of smartphones.

On June 11, the company unveiled their newest mobile app that allows its users to deposit cheques through their phone.

Atul Varde, senior vice president and chief information officer said this device is new to Canada, but the United States of America have been using for many years.

“The risk experience over there has been very manageable, so on balance it’s been an extremely successful service in the U.S.,” Varde said.

The app called Deposit Anywhere, is currently only available to Apple phones and tablets, but will cross over to Androids Blackberry 10 platforms by the end of the year.

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“You essentially take a picture of the front and then of the back of the cheque. You indicate which account the cheque should be deposited into to, and then you type in the amount of the cheque and hit submit,” Varde explained. “And essentially all of that information out of those two images go to the back-end server, which does a whole bunch of image checks on it.”

He said if images are blurry the user will be prompted to re-take the images. It will check the amount of cheque is the same as the banker keyed and following that it will follow the same protocol as if someone deposited a cheque to an ATM.

“So, really it’s a very convenient way of depositing cheques and if that’s the only reason you were going to go into a branch or go to an ATM, this saves you that time,” Varde said.

Since going live the feedback has been “extremely positive”, especially from those segments of memberships that run small businesses.

Anti-fraud measures taken

To help avoid fraud Affinity has existing fraud management measures that apply to this channel.

“Just like with an ATM cheque deposit or a branch deposit, holds apply to the funds, so the amount on the cheque the funds aren’t immediately available to you … so there is that risk management piece as well,” Varde said, adding they also have software that can detect duplicate cheques to a certain degree.

In addition, Varde explained there will be consequences for a user who tries to perpetrate such a fraud.

“It is a privilege with this being offered through the app and should that be abused in certain circumstances then one of the options available is to turn that feature off for that particular individual,” he said.

It’s also a possibility that a customer would make an inadvertent deposit because they forgot they have already deposited before.

However, because the cheque never gets taken away from the banker, Varde said sometimes people forget they have already deposited it.

“Once the first deposit is successful saying and advising you to write on the back of the cheque deposited via Affinity Mobile on such and such a date, and the Canadian Payments Association, their rules require that you to hang on to the paper cheque for at least 90 days,” with no more than 120 days, he said.

To help, the app offers the user an opportunity to set a reminder on the phone that will indicate when to destroy the deposited cheque.

Affinity Credit Union is among three in Canada that are utilizing mobile cheque deposits, Wesminster Savings Credit Union in British Columbia, Meridians Credit Union in Ontario.

sstone@panow.com

On Twitter: @sarahstone84