Kiss the teller goodbye and try not to laugh when you walk past people in line at the local ATM! Leading financial institutions are making banking way easier with applications that customize account alerts, locate the nearest branch and, most conveniently, deposit checks right from your smartphone. The United States is expected to have 53.1 million mobile banking users by 2013, according to a TowerGroup report. Don’t get left behind; embrace it and consider signing up for mobile banking with these 5 easy-to-use apps.
Chase Mobile
Chase has paved the way with mobile-remote deposit capture. Simply take a picture of the front and back of an endorsed check with your camera-phone and, voila, the bank verifies the check and deposits the funds into your account the same day. There’s a catch–this perk is only available for iPhone users and you can’t deposit more than $1,000 per day or more than $3,000 a month. Other mobile capabilities, such as managing bills and credit card payments, viewing account balances and transactions, and finding nearby Chase branches or ATMs are available to all mobile app carriers (iPad, iPod Touch and BlackBerry included).
Bank of America Mobile Banking
The four tabs on the main menu make the BofA app easy to navigate, from transferring funds to checking account balances. Â Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, iPod Touch and Palm Pre users can get up-to-date account alerts, access transaction history, credit card, and account information and pay bills while on-the-go. Â The app’s geo-location capabilities are a definite plus; but the delay in loading pages? Negative.
Wells Fargo
As the first bank to offer customers web-based account access, it’s no surprise this app loads screens swiftly and has toggle menus that make branch searches simple. Its ability to filter search results based on what services a particular branch has to offer gives customers accurate results (without the delay). The WF app is available to BlackBerry, iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users. Earlier this year, the bank allowed all customers to manage their accounts through text banking. Now customers can obtain the necessary information, styled like an ATM receipt, whether they opted to bank online or not.
Citi Mobile
Citibank only offers an app for the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and Android devices, however, BlackBerry, Palm smartphone and other cell phones users can still access mobile content via the web-based site. App users have access to many of the standard mobile banking capabilities, but like the Wells Fargo app can set-up customized text messaging alerts–notifying users about recent activity to critically low account levels.
Union Bank
UB came on-board the mobile app ship last week; offering its commercial customers access to the bank’s Online Business Center by way of their smartphones. The app is only available to iPhone, BlackBerry and Android users, but banking capabilities are available online to anyone with a web-enabled mobile device. Business banking customers can perform their usual banking regimen such as approving wire transfers and following account activity. Balances are displayed in all major foreign currencies.
Read more: Free Mobile Apps That Save You Money
Note: You must be signed-up for mobile banking to use the featured applications.
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