My previous post on the USAA iPhone application was extremely popular. I suddenly had much more visits to my blogpage, which implied that I have a lot of US readers (thank you), or this check imaging system is really groundbreaking...I have not used a check (nor seen one) for years (I do all of my payments electronically), so I had to do some thinking to get my head around what the application actually do. My recollection is that a check is a paper instruction to my bank to pay money into the bank account of the beneficiary. Typically, I would give the check to the beneficiary that passes it on to his/her bank and then this bank passes it on to my bank. Ultimately the check lands up at my bank where the money is duly subtracted from my account and paid over to another bank. It seems in the US it is now possible to pass an image of the check from bank to bank, rather than the physical check itself. And this is possible because we now have technology that is powerful enough to replicate the physical process exactly.
Surely, one should use technology to improve, rather than replicate the manual process? The obvious (and simple) application would be for me (rather than getting the beneficiary and his/her bank to do it), to pass the image of my own check to my own bank, instructing them to pay the money over to the beneficiary. As an even more bold step, we could remove the image and just ask my bank (electronically), using my iPhone to subtract the money and pay the money into the account of the beneficiary.
This would have been real innovation in my book.