Oriental’s check-image deposit transactions exceed $1M
Less than a year after launching, Oriental’s check-image deposit service, “FotoDepósito,” has generated more than $1 million in transactions from customers using their smartphones to interact with the bank, officials said Wednesday.
In October 2013, Oriental became the first bank in Puerto Rico to offer customers a mobile platform through which they could avoid branches to process their deposits.
“The launching of the ‘FotoDepósito’ tool has resulted in an increase in the number of users of orientalbank.com, our online banking service, as well as of the mobile banking application,” said Félix Silva, senior vice president of individual and corporate banking at Oriental.
“Close to 30 percent of our customer base with a checking and savings account are registered for Oriental’s online banking. The boom ‘FotoDepósito’ has caused is such that it exceeded the projections Oriental mapped out upon launch,” he said.
Oriental has received an average of 3,000 checks a month through “FotoDepósito” from active mobile banking customers, said Luana Santos, Oriental’s vice president of sales, products and consumer credit.
The bank noted that online banking services have taken center stage and part of its corporate strategy calls for developing those alternate channels, especially its mobile application.
“Since the last quarter of 2013 we experienced increased customer registration to online banking with an upward trend per month of between 3 percent and 4 percent,” Silva said, citing studies that show increased usage of smartphones in general.
“Consumers have established a trend and are always looking for tools to expedite and facilitate access to their money in a safe and immediate way,” said Santos. “The challenge is for the banks, and it is about maintaining standards of quality and the service level they are looking for, which is also imposed upon us by changing technology.”