Case study: Small banks and mobile tech

USAA Federal Savings Bank is a single branch operation in San Antonio, Texas, in a military-focused niche, but it offers a view of how smaller institutions might be able to leverage technology to compete with the bigger guys. The bank says more than 11 percent of its members, about 800,000 people, use its mobile banking services, according to the American Banker. To put that in perspective, Bank of America's push to get over the 2 million mobile customers nationwide generated lots of media coverage. So the minnow may be onto something.

According to American Banker, USAA "has had 7.9 million mobile logins so far in the year's first half, after about 7 million in all of 2008." About 35 percent of these came from BlackBerry devices, another 35% from iPhones. An iPhone application was launched in May that allows customers to manage their accounts. That app, via the Apple App Store, was downloaded 55,000 times during the first week it was available. It's not taking its foot off the pedal. The newspaper says USAA plans to soon launch a consumer remote deposit application for the iPhone, which lets users take a picture of the front and back of each check and submit them electronically to USAA for deposit. Other banks ought to take note. 

For more:
- here's the American Banker article

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