Known for Its Mobile-Deposit App, Ingo Money Adds a Unique Check-Splitting Feature

Ingo Money Inc. this week introduced a feature on its 3-year-old mobile app that allows users to split check deposits across multiple accounts, including bank accounts, prepaid cards, bill payments, and PayPal. Using Ingo’s decision engine and bank integrations, the feature also offers immediate, guaranteed funds availability.

The feature works by imaging a check and then dividing the check amount into the accounts designated by the user. As with the existing Ingo Money app, which now claims more than 650,000 downloads, the new check-splitting feature is aimed at consumers who want or need immediate funds availability. Now, check splitting allows them to spread the money across multiple accounts.

Ingo claims to be the first company to offer such a feature, and at least some experts agree. “This appears to be the first application like it,” says Ben Jackson, director of the prepaid advisory service at Mercator Advisory Group, Maynard, Mass. “If there is another one out there that goes from a check image to multiple accounts, I am not aware of it.”

The importance of guaranteed funds availability in each account is that, without it, users could incur overdraft fees if they spend the cash, only to find in a few days that the check bounced, Drew Edwards, chief executive of Roswell, Ga.-based Ingo, tells Digital Transactions News. “What people don’t understand with mobile deposit is it’s a provisional credit,” he says. “That’s what drives millions of consumers into the cash environment, and that’s what we’re trying to solve for here.”

The generator for the check guarantees, what Edwards calls Ingo’s “secret sauce,” is the proprietary technology that makes up its decision engine. The approval rate varies by factors such as how well Ingo knows the user, but “We’re able to get to a ‘yes’ across the board over nine out of 10 times,” Edwards says. The mobile app imposes a $5,000 limit on checks, which are processed by Ingo’s partner bank, Gainesville, Ga.-based First Century Bank, N.A.

Immediate, guaranteed funding comes with a price. Ingo charges a 1% fee for printed payroll or government checks, 4% for all other checks. Deposits into prepaid cards are free, but bill payments cost $3 apiece, as they are considered expedited payments. Using the app is free for consumers who are willing to wait for ordinary check clearing. Some 97% take the immediate option, Edwards says.

Pricing is critical for the market Ingo serves, Jackson says. “The value of the feature will depend on its cost to the user,” he says. “Enabling people to make multiple bill payments all from one check makes the lives of unbanked and underbanked people much easier. But if they are paying for every transfer or bill payment, then the costs might hurt Ingo’s competitiveness with other forms of bill payment.

For now, though, the only competition the app, together with the new check-splitting feature, may have could be some of the accounts it is funding, since those accounts, rather than the app, could then be used to make further payments. “So, if a consumer is using PayPal or a prepaid card for other payments, then they may just want to stick with that current method, depending on pricing for the services,” says Jackson.