10 Ways to Use your Banking App
If you’re not using your mobile for banking purposes, you’re missing out. You can use banking apps for sending you instant fraud alerts, reminding you to pay a bill, helping you save for a vacation, and even finding the nearest ATM.
Today, you not only can check balances and make payments, but you can also use many of them to evaluate your budget and help you make well informed financial decisions.
Let’s have a better overview of the benefits that you can have using banking apps!
1. Deposit Checks
You do not have to make a trip to ATM now just to deposit a check! Nearly every bank apps allow you to endorse a check and then use your smartphone’s camera to deposit it remotely. Although it has some restrictions, like Chase allows you to deposit a maximum of $2,000 a day, Alliant Credit Union allows you to deposit up to $50,000 worth of checks per day.
2. Send Travel Messages
Many banks allow you to add trip notifications months in advance on your app rather than enduring the long interactive voice menus over the phone. You can just select the dates you’ll be away, where you’ll be going, and which cards you’re using (credit and ATM/debit card). Often the app will also remind you of any foreign transaction fees (usually 3 percent).
3. Control your Debit Card
You can stop overdrawing from your account using a debit card! Using a bank app you can set spending limits and send automatic notifications about your balance. Often you can get control of your
debit card control, and you can also refill the debit card from your phone.
4. Pay Friends
You can reimburse a friend using your banking app. These days, most banking apps allow you to make payment to individuals directly, from one bank account to another. Your friend doesn’t need to be customers of the same bank, but they just have access to the same third-party service.
5. Check your Credit Score
Checking your financial health is quite easy from these banking apps. Most banking apps allow you to check your credit score for free from one of the three monitoring houses, like TransUnion.
6. Get a Mortgage
Nowadays you can use some banking apps to apply for or receive a mortgage in minutes. TD’s app can even use your location to find properties close to you. If you’re close to one of them, you can get a pre-approved mortgage offer based on your credit score and assets.
7. Report a Lost or Stolen Card
You can also report the stolen or lost card through your banking app which is the quickest, most pain-free way to close them. You can even order a new card. You may also temporary lock the card if in case you’re not sure whether you actually lost it or not. If you find suspicious charges or warning from your bank, you can dispute a transaction in seconds, without visiting the bank or going through the tortuous phone calls.
8. Improve your Finance Health
All major banking apps let you easily analyze your spending and saving habits. Many would only offer a spending summary, whereas some apps would show you at a glance you’re spending more. Many apps like TD’s would go further with graphs depicting daily spending habits, what’s helpful for you, and what changes you could make to meet your savings goals.
9. Start a Business
Many banks allow you to apply for a small-business loan via your smartphone. It takes at least two weeks traditionally with multiple visits to the bank and a whole lot of exchanging documents. But through online using banking app will save days of downtime. You can apply for a loan in six and a half minutes, and in some cases even get the funds deposited in their account within seconds.
10. Bonus Round
To stay connected with you, your financial institution are adding app features that might have nothing to do with finance — like train schedules. With TD’s app, you can get notifications and estimates of travel time, and also the alerts about delays on some public transit systems. Why? Maybe because of that old adage, “time is money.”
Synopsis
So, these are the multiple benefits that you can get using your banking app on your smartphone! Do not shy away from using your banking app and get the most of it!
