GoBank Finetunes User Agreement Again
GoBank has revised its deposit account agreement — again.
The mobile-first direct bank from Green Dot Corporation is nothing if not careful. The young bank, which launched just before the July 4 holiday, has already made several adjustments to its policies for customers, the most notorious of which is the 10-day hold on check deposits.
Green Dot CEO Steve Streit told Bank Innovation in September to expect this restriction to lift for some members this month. The implication of “some members” is that segmentation of users is starting to occur, with different risk policies for different types of customers.
The email, received October 3, is below. The bullet points from the email are reproduced here:
- In order to send money to friends and family using the app or website, you must now activate your GoBank debit card first. (Psst… if you’ve already done this, you’re good-to-go.)
- We’ve clarified that limits apply for cash deposits at retailers (and that they’re generally more restrictive than overall limits.) Those details can be found in our FAQs here.
- We’ve clarified the amount of cash you can deposit into your account each day. The most you can deposit to your account in any day in cash is $2,500.
- We’ve raised the amount of money you can spend each day from $3,000 to $5,000.
While this final point is a slight lifting of restrictions, the other points tighten the risk management policy, which is already among the more conservative out there. As noted in a recent post, GoBank may be particularly risk-averse dues to Green Card’s history with money laundering using its prepaid cards.
In this era of ubiquitous data, it would be expected that as GoBank gets to know its customers better, these policies will ease. Different policies for different classes of members is common. Customer trust is important too — will young customers with a choice of institutions and little loyalty stick with a bank as strict as GoBank once they run up against its limits?
Below is an image of the email received October 3 at 7:14 PM. GoBank’s legal page is here.
