I had to deposit some cash into my savings account this morning so I used the Wells Fargo ATM in my grocery store on the way in to work. There are two machines there and another gentleman was finishing up his transaction as I started looking around for deposit envelopes. And looking. And looking. And..where are they? Then I noticed from the corner of my eye that the machines looked new. At that moment the gentleman finished his transaction and saw me looking puzzled and said “No deposit envelopes! You don’t need them anymore – check this out!” and he showed me his receipt from a deposit he just made of a check. The receipt had a teensy image of the check right there on it! Apparently the new deposit slots are scanners which will image checks and scan cash. So I somewhat apprehensively stepped up to the machine and went for it. When I selected deposit it gave me new options – Deposit Checks or Deposit Cash. When I slid in the 2 bills, it popped up on the screen with “You are depositing (2) $100 bills for a total of $200, correct?” so I pushed Yes and got my receipt which listed that 2 x $100 detail at the bottom.
Trippy!!
Now, I don’t know what happens if you selected No – if it would spit back out the bills or what. Thankfully I don’t deposit cash all that often so I hope I don’t have to find out! I did search online just now to find that image I inserted and apparently these new machines are not *that* new. B of A has been using them for several months and I saw some blog posts about issues with them especially with cash transactions. In typical B of A style they had launched the machines without preparing for problems and had no process in place to handle customer claims if the wrong amount was counted in the slot! Shocking (not).
I’m just glad the WF machine worked fine this morning. However, even though I am generally pretty comfortable using the latest technology, I do agree with the many blog posts I read which opined that there will be an increase in human teller use with the machines! I am sure that a lot of people will NOT trust them and will walk inside instead.
I really thought it was rather cool 🙂
Trees & Flowers & Birds! 
I think I’d be skeptical, too. I’d probably wait a couple of years before even trying them. Like paying for groceries with a debit card. I am just now getting comfy with it. I still use cash whenever possible.
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I can’t believe we’ve had something here in Suburbia longer than you have in the big West Coast city. 🙂 I like the new method a lot. It’s much easier.
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I know huh? I mean, I don’t use the ATM very much at all, but I did just use it in June so I know these are pretty new to San Diego! Guess they worked out the kinks out your way before rolling it out to the Big Time users 😉
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We’ve had those for about a year and have had a few problems with them. They don’t always scan the check…although they don’t keep it, just spit it back out…which means you then have to make a trip inside the bank just for that one check. This seemed to happen more often at first, but not as much lately (knock wood) so maybe they’ve improved it. Also, we frequently deposit many checks at one time (especially when DH was getting reimbursements for job hunt trips)……each one has to go through the process, so it adds quite a bit of time over just putting them all in the envelope and entering the total. It could get embarassing when we’d have 8 or 10 checks to deposit and there was a line-up behind us waiting!
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Now that is COOL!! Thanks for the information and article. This site rocks!
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