U.S. Bank
Now that many banking customers are used to depositing paper checks by snapping a photo with their cellphones, some banks are adding another feature: photo bill pay.
U.S. Bank this week introduced a mobile “photo bill pay” service, which allows its online and mobile banking customers to snap a photo of a paper bill with their phone and have the information automatically loaded into their account. Then, they can pay the bill electronically. First Financial Bank in Abilene, Tex., began offering the service earlier this year, too. A hat tip to Netbanker for bringing that bank to our attention.
U.S. Bank is offering the service as part of its mobile banking app, which is available on Android phones as well as the iPhone and iPad.
The question I had immediately when I heard about the service was, huh? Who gets paper bills anymore? Doesn’t everyone with online or mobile banking get electronic bills?
Turns out, they don’t. Niti Badarinath, the head of mobile banking at U.S. Bank, said that only about 20 to 30 percent of active online banking customers at the biggest banks use e-bills. And those who do prefer e-bills still have to deal with merchants that don’t offer them — and it’s not just mom and pop stores, but sometimes larger companies, too.
As everyone who banks online knows, adding account numbers and billing information to your system is tedious. So the new service lets customers add a new bill by snapping a photo. It’s currently most useful for adding new billing accounts — if, for instance, you’ve opened a new bank account or moved to a new home and have new utility providers.
But soon, the app also will allow bill payments for accounts you have already entered. So if you get a paper bill every month, you can snap a photo of it. The amount due and the date due is entered into your account automatically. You can then click to verify, and the system will schedule the bill to be paid on that date.
Mr. Badarinath said as more customers use mobile banking, they expect parity with features available on their online accounts. So consumers can expect to see more mobile tools based on image snapshots to be made available: “We’re building a better experience for our customers,” he said.
Do you think mobile bill payment is a useful feature? If you’ve used it, let us know about your experience.
Article source: http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/14/next-in-mobile-banking-photo-bill-payments/?partner=rss&emc=rss