GoBank customers are now on a longer leash.
The notoriously conservative neobank operated by prepaid pioneer Green Dot Corp. has eased up on its policy of holding mobile check deposits for as long as 10 days.
The new, more liberal policy was announced yesterday. Here’s the text of the email announcing the change:
Dear [GoBank user],
Thanks so much for using GoBank’s Mobile Deposit feature! We just wanted to send you a quick note about a couple updates we’ve made:
We’ve revamped our system so the majority of deposits will now have shorter hold times. (Woohoo!) Checks that used to be held for 10 days now qualify for a shorter hold time and quicker deposit.
If you deposit a check and we have to hold it longer than 3 business days, we’ll send you an email with an option to cancel the deposit if you’d rather deposit the check somewhere else. Deposits held for 1-3 business days can’t be canceled.
As always, we like to keep you informed on our updates and changes, so thanks for reading!
Happy Banking,
Your friends at GoBank
This may not be a huge improvement in the world at large, but it can mean a great deal for GoBank customers dependent on checks. The bank has pointed out repeatedly that only a few personal checks for some (presumably high-risk) users are held for this long, but still, the extreme length attracted a slew of negative attention for the bank. Green Dot has weathered a great deal of fraud in the past, apparently even becoming one of the favored forms of currency for prisoners. This led the company to discontinue its MoneyPak reload kits this summer.
Also on the retail front, new GoBank customers must now pick up “starter debit cards” at participating retail partners such as Walmart in order to open accounts. This program is currently being piloted at 20 stores in Texas, as CEO Steve Streit mentioned on the company’s most recent quarterly earnings call.
The RDC restrictions were misguided from the start. Consumer Reports pointed out in July that restrictive policies such as GoBank’s can hurt customers with limited funds, which is presumably the bank’s target audience, and a recent study by Mitek revealed that fully 80% of financial institutions using remote deposit capture (PDF) had reported no fraud at all.
“We started with conservative policies, and as we get more experienced, we’ll adjust them as we see appropriate,” John Morton, Green Dot’s chief risk officer told Bank Innovation last summer.
GoBank teased new features this summer on its Instagram feed — then promptly deleted the post. While easing restrictive deposit policies is a step in the right direction, it does not count as a new feature.
GoBank is now over one year old. It’s time to open up further and further reduce friction for customers if it hopes to gain widespread usage among millennials in search of a financial institution that matches their goals and lifestyle.