USAA BANK WILL ALLOW CUSTOMERS TO DEPOSIT CHECKS BY IPHONE

It sounds cliche, but these days, there really isn't much you can't do with a cell phone. Take pictures and send them to everyone and anyone? yup! Access the internet? yup! Download and play music? yup!  Deposit checks? what was before a nope...is now, you guessed it-- a yup!

USAA, a privately held bank and insurance company, plans to update its iPhone app this week to introduce the check deposit feature, which requires a customer to photograph both sides of the check with the phone’s camera. Once you've taken a picture of both sides of the check, you can send it in to the bank and they will deposit it for you. Customers will not have to mail the check to the bank later; the deposit will be handled entirely electronically.

While this idea sounds wonderful in theory, it also poses a huge security risk, and ups the fraud factor greatly. However, the folks at USAA plan to reduce the potential for fraud by only allowing customers who are eligible for credit and have some type of insurance through USAA  to use the deposit feature. And, although USAA might seem like an unlikely bank to use this innovative feature (it ranks in size just below the top 20 banks in the United States), they are actually doing a great service to their customers, as about a million of USAA’s 7.2 million customers use their cellphones to access their accounts — either via text message, a mobile browser or an iPhone application introduced in May.

So, what do you think? Would you use this app? Would you trust it?