Barclays mobile cheque imaging pilot is now live, so if you’re a Barclays customer you can start paying in Barclays cheques using your Barclays Mobile Banking app.
Banks will start routinely processing cheques as images from the 31st of July 2016, with all banks processing all cheques as images by October 2017.
The Barclays pilot is limited, you can only pay in cheques drawn on a Barclays bank up to a value of £500. You just take a photo of your cheque, submit it using the app along with the amount and payee details, and the cheque amount will show in your account almost instantly.
Barclays Personal or Premier customer can deposit up to 4 cheques each week, or if you’re a Business customer up to 20 cheques per week.
To use mobile cheque imaging with Barclays you’ll need either an Android phone (2.3.3 or above with a minimum 5 mega pixel camera), or an iPhone 4 or above and iPad 3 or above (running iOS 6 or above).
As a Barclays customer I’d happily use the service rather than run down to the bank, except I only get a couple of cheques a year (normally from the government!) and even then they’re rarely drawn on a Barclays bank. I think my last cheque was a car tax refund and whilst I’d happily pay it in by Barclays mobile cheque imaging you’d think the government would save some stamps and refund via bank transfer.
Cheques might be antiquated, but at least by October 2017, we’ll no longer have to walk down to the bank to deposit them. Sooner for Barclays customers.
2 Responses
When I first saw this I thought it was a joke until seeing their advert on TV. Cheques in 2015, really, they haven’t produced cheque guarantee cards for years. Must be the best part of a decade since I took a cheque.
A system like this will only work if it works for all banks.
What puzzles me is that the banks still transfer cheques round the country rather than use scanned images (especially as the pay in machines often scan cheques as they are deposited).
Why can’t PC (computer and scanner) pay in be allowed.
Cheques from large businesses/government are verified against a database of issued cheques so there is not any danger of them being photoshopped (except perhaps the name on the cheque).