Back in 2005, when I bought my house here in Peoria, I was sitting in a downtown law office when I suddenly realized that I had brought only my checkbook to the closing. Knowing that I needed a cashier’s check, I interrupted the attorneys and said, “I have a problem.” After calling my long-time bank in Minneapolis, I learned that the closest branch was 45 minutes away—so I hopped in my car and drove to get the check. Despite the “Check 21 Act” being enacted a year earlier, we were still a long way from the promises of paperless banking transactions.

Recently, I received another check that I wanted to deposit at that same national bank, but this time, seeing Check 21 in action amazed me. Using my bank’s mobile banking software, I took out my Sprint EVO 4G phone, took a photograph of the front of the check, endorsed and photographed the back, and pressed “send.” After my EVO told me the transaction had cleared, I stared dumbfounded at the paper check wondering what to do next. Certainly, there must be more to it than that? Shouldn’t I still mail them the check? Knowing that businesses using Check 21 had machines that automatically scanned, verified, and shredded the original checks, I simply wrote “DEPOSITED VIA SPRINT USING MOBILE BANKING” on the face of the check and filed it away.

The way that banks move money will continue to change. Recently, Sprint announced the launch of the first Google Wallet. Unlike the mobile banking that I did (making a check deposit from a mobile phone), Google Wallet works like a credit card and allows a Sprint subscriber to hold a phone up to a transceiver (at a gas pump, a vending machine, or some 2,275 other locations in Chicago alone) before entering a PIN to complete the transaction. The debate about whether the “phone as wallet” will take off seems silly to me; I have no doubt that the next generation of adults will be far more likely to leave home without their wallet than without their phone.

This isn’t to say that mobile phone wallets will replace credit cards, but will surpass them because of their superior capabilities. Eventually, you can expect your mobile wallet to receive an electronic receipt (with GPS information) and upload it directly to the cloud for storage. If you ever lose your wallet, it’s not only comforting to know that no one else will be able to use your “credit card,”  but it is downright awesome for your missing wallet to tell you where it is (if you are not running Lookout Mobile Security on your phone yet, I can’t tell you how cool it was to push a button on a web site, see my phone’s location on a map (safe and sound somewhere at home of course), and then hear a faint siren emulating from … you guessed it: the cushions of my couch.) 

Another reason that mobile banking is the future is that your purchase patterns will cause mobile coupons to be generated that are relevant to your daily experience (i.e., “non-spammy”). For example, as I walk by the coffee shop, the “big brain in the cloud” might say “Hmm, Christopher has walked by the coffee shop three mornings in a row without buying a Quad-shot Venti Caramel Macchiato … maybe he needs a $1 off coupon the next time he walks by?” Or, who knows, maybe the big brain in the sky will say “Christopher hasn’t written a blog entry in 4.3 days, maybe a 25-cent coupon will work if we also remind him of his publishing deadline and show him a picture of our nice comfy chairs.”