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Ally Bank Starts Roll Out of eCheck Deposit for Scanning Checks at Home
Ally Bank announced from its Straight Talk blog that it has started the roll out of eCheck Deposit. According to the post, they will be rolling this out to "customers in phases throughout 2011." Here's how Ally describes the service:
All you need is a computer with an Internet connection and a scanner. Then, simply scan and submit your check images electronically. We’ll send you an e-mail when we receive and process your check image. If there’s ever a problem with your deposit, we’ll let you know so you can fix it and resend.
You'll have to wait for Ally to get the chance of trying this out. According to the post:
We’ll send an e-mail notification to customers letting them know when they will have access.
I had posted on the remote deposit capture plans of Ally and ING Direct last month. In that post, a few readers expressed concern on how banks will ensure this service isn't abused by criminals. I think this is one reason why banks like Ally and ING Direct have been taking so long to release this. According to my contact at Ally, they "spent time testing eCheck Deposit Service with employees to ensure it is safe and secure."
In the comments from my last remote deposit post, a reader described steps that Alliant Credit Union takes to ensure their eDeposit Plus service remains free of fraud. At Alliant, you have to have been a member for six months before you can qualify. At USAA Bank, it's limited to members who are eligible for USAA property and casualty insurance. This requires some military connection. I reviewed several banks and credit unions that offer remote deposit last year.
How is remote deposit going to increase the chances of fraud? I suppose it will make it slightly easier for *really lazy* fraudsters who don't actually want to go to the trouble of printing out a new check and forging a signature in ink... Anything I'm missing here?
C'mon, Nigerian fraudsters can make real-looking fake cashiers checks easily. In other words, fraud risk is already extremely high. The remote deposit isn't significantly increasing it.
Now if I change one number on the account field or make 3 to looks like 8, the money will be stollen from someone else’s account and deposited to mine. If I do a number of other mischiefs and get the money out and dissappear, by the time the whole fraud is exposed, I will be in south America.
For your info: Many accounts are being opened with stollen IDs, just to do the crime and it is almost impossible to re-trace the whole fraud back and even less chances to find the frauds-ter. Read FBI, FTC and other sites for such frauds, they are happening on daily bases.
CHECK 21 also says that in the case where an image and a physical check are presented for payment, the physical check takes precidence. So if someone submits a remote deposit at Credit Union A and then deposits the physical check at Bank B, Credit Union A would be on the hook for the amount because they cannot back up the image with a physcial check and Bank B can. It does not matter that Credit Union A submitted the image weeks before the deposit took place at Bank B, all that matters is who has the physical check.
Also, to poster #8, remote deposit caption systems perform an optical character recognition (OCR) for the routing and account numbers (MICR encoding), so fraudsters don't need to have magnetic toner if they are intent on committing fraud with RDC. OCR is why you can use any scanner or mobile device if the FI offers that service.
Anonymous - #8, You are deadly wrong, #6 is correct, scanners can not see any magnetic ink and the fraud is easy to do. You can create a check in any wordprocessor and presented to a bank using a scanner and the bank will never know it until is too late.
I don't know how they could get much less competitive rates than they already have right now.... unless they want to start charging ME interest for me giving them my deposited funds... :-)