Almost full-service banking by smart phone.
I’ve been doing 95% my banking online for the past five to eight years. I seldom write any checks and never visit the bank and wait on line for a teller. Instead, I have direct deposit from some of my publishers and use online bill pay (through my bank’s Web site) and online bill paying features in Quicken to make payments. When I receive money by check, I deposit at an ATM. When I need to pay someone with a check — which is more and more seldom these days — I pull out one of the ones leftover from my original check stock, blow the dust off, and write one.
Some Words about Bank of America
I do all of my banking with Bank of America. Before you start bashing them, let me explain why. Our local branch in Wickenburg was, until recently, extraordinarily helpful. We had no trouble opening accounts, getting loans, refinancing our home, getting a home equity line of credit, etc. The staff knew us by name and always helped us immediately with any problems. It just made sense to put everything in one bank.
Since then, Bank of America has done its part to seriously piss me off — as they piss off everyone else they come in contact with. The local branch service completely failed to help us with a very serious problem, actually bringing me to tears in the branch location. I was forced to work with the monster that is Bank of America’s loan department and, although I resolved the situation satisfactorily, I have not been back to the branch since. I also have serious fears that the same problem will arise again and it has forced me to take a completely different approach on my personal finances. But that’s another story.
In general, my banking with Bank of America works pretty well. Between my husband and I, we have many accounts: 3 personal checking, 2 business checking, 2 credit cards, 2 mortgages, 1 home equity line of credit, and a 1 “recreational vehicle” (helicopter) loan. To start moving these accounts to another bank just because Bank of America isn’t what it used to be would be a time-consuming exercise in frustration. I have better ways to spend time frustrating myself.
What I do like about Bank of America’s Web access is that I can access all of my accounts from one login screen. This makes it really easy to manage my accounts. And it works with Quicken for free (although they do charge for QuickBooks access, which is why I don’t use QuickBooks). Even bill pay is free. And checking, as long as I use my debit card at least once a month. So my banking costs are quite low and access is quite convenient. How can I complain?
Point is: please don’t fill up the comments with suggestions on a better bank. I’m not interested in switching.
The Bank of America App
Recently, I downloaded the Bank of America iPhone App. It sat on my phone for at least a few weeks before I decided to give it a try. It has limited functionality, but it does make it relatively easy to check account balances, pay bills (to known payees), and transfer money using the app.
The app is pretty straightforward. You open it and then log in using the same kind of Site Key protection that’s on the Web version of online banking. You then choose from three options:
- Accounts displays all your accounts and their balances. Clicking an account shows transactions in that account. Clicking a transaction shows transaction details.
- Bill Pay & E-Bills gives you access to the bill pay feature. You can make a single payment, view (an cancel, but not change) outgoing payments, and view unpaid e-bills (if you have any).
- Transfer Funds lets you transfer money between your accounts now, schedule a transfer between your accounts for later, or transfer to another person (if you have this feature set up).
Although the app’s limited functionality makes it impossible to use without occasional Web access — for example, you can’t set up a payee in the app; you must do that on the Web site or from within Quicken — it is, in general, quicker to use than the Web site — especially if you suffer from painfully slow Internet connections, as I do at home in Wickenburg. The phone has fewer options, so it takes fewer clicks (or taps) to get to the feature you need. Unfortunately, that feature doesn’t appear immediately. Worse yet, when you go back, there’s no indication that the app is doing anything — some kind of wait cursor or Internet access indicator would really help. But I still think it’s quicker and easier to use than the Web site for the few features it does support.
Point in case: today I paid my mechanic for some work he did on my helicopter. I was able to do this while eating breakfast, without firing up a computer. Launch the app, log in, and get right to the payment page. Enter an amount, send it, confirm it, and I’m done. It took about a minute.
And I can do this from anywhere I have a 3G phone signal. (I have Verizon, so that’s nearly everywhere I go.)
Conclusion
While I’m certain this isn’t the best banking app out there, it is the one that my bank offers, so it’s the only one I’ve experienced. If this is an indication of what’s to come, I’m very glad. The quicker and easier banking tasks are, the less time I have to spend doing them — or dealing with the bank’s staff.
Now that I’ve tried it, I’ll likely be using it more often.
What do you think? Do you use an app for your banking needs? If so, share your experiences in the comments.
We were staying at the 
I thought about how I was neglecting my blog. (This is the first real entry in over a week.) I wished I could write and post something about my trip — the great fish dinner on the first night, one of the other wives getting her luggage lost by the airline and our subsequent shopping spree at Target, the luggage size of our companions who apparently packed for three weeks instead of three days, the great deal I got on a rental car, the surprisingly peppy ride of the Hundai Accent I wound up with. Or maybe the authentic Spanish tapas I enjoyed with my family in Saint Augustine and the huge ice cream sundaes we consumed afterwards. Or the weather, which dipped down to the 20s (F, not C) at night, with a wind that obliterated the wonderful reflections I’d photographed from our room the day we arrived and ruined what might have been a nice walk along the ocean on the last day of our stay. I couldn’t blog about any of this because (1) typing a long document on the iPad’s “keyboard” is likely to result in insanity (2) I didn’t have access to the Internet to post anything.
With all this in mind, it’s pretty clear to me that I should have brought along the laptop. With it, I could have used my phone to get online. I could have blogged daily. I could have kept up-to-date with tweets. I could have realized that the weather would turn sour and those wonderful reflections on the pond outside the hotel would be gone the next day, giving me no second chance to photograph them properly.
Nationwide 900 Plus Email covers my phone usage and its regular smartphone features, including e-mail, which I rarely use. (I don’t like getting e-mail on my phone. I get enough on my computer.) This costs me $99 per month. I honestly don’t know if that’s high or low. All I know is that I can use the phone as much as I need to, it works just about everywhere I go, and the mobile-to-mobile and friends & family plans keep me from going over the 900 peak minutes I’m allowed. The bill here shows exactly what I paid for last month and it’s pretty clear that I wasn’t very stingy with my usage.
Mind you, I’m camped on a construction site across the street from a cherry orchard 8 miles up a canyon from Wenatchee, WA. (The tiny red X on the map marks the approximate spot.) It’s amazing to me that (1) my cell phone works so well up here, usually giving me five [legitimate] bars and (2) I’m able to stay connected to the Internet for so long.
The first year, 
You want irony? Here’s the message I got in my Web browser only 10 minutes after posting this whine. These guys don’t even know how to configure the obsolete software they use.