Ron Shevlin, whom I admire for his thinking on banking innovation (and for calling his blog Snarketing — love that), has some valuable opinions on remote deposit capture, which he published today. I agree with some, but not all of them.

The essence of what Ron wrote was that RDC is not the mobile banking panacea some claim.

RDC may be a very important feature when it comes to attracting customers to mobile banking. But it’s not why people “understand the value” of mobile banking, and is unlikely to be a significant revenue generator.

I agree that RDC will not be a significant revenue generator, in the classic sense. Ron makes four points related to RDC revenue: 1) that consumers invariably say they’ll pay for something, but then balk when the invoice arrives; 2) RDC tends to be used by Gen Y-ers, who don’t have as much disposable income; 3) charging for RDC will open banks to political/public opinion backlash; and 4) that despite the cost savings inherent in RDC, consumers are not necessarily willing to pay for such savings. These are all strong points, and I don’t have a dispute with any of them. There is “revenue” in RDC, however, but I’ll get to that in a moment.

Where I differ from Ron is on RDC’s role in mobile banking. Here’s what Ron wrote:

According to research recently completed by Aite Group, using a generous definition of mobile banking adoption, about one in four US consumers are mobile bankers (a more conservative definition puts the adoption rate at 20%). Of these mobile bankers, about one in five used a smartphone to take a picture of a check in the past three months, one in ten used a feature phone to perform the task, and 7% used a tablet to do it.

Based on this rate of usage, it’s hard for me to agree the RDC is a major reason why people “understand the value of mobile banking.” More than half of all mobile bankers are Gen Yers — a generation that is already a major user of everything mobile-related. These folks don’t need RDC to convince them of the value of mobile banking.

Yes, American Banker went a bit too far in saying that “RDC is a major reason why people ‘understand the value of mobile banking.'” But there is nothing in Aite’s data that would clearly indicate RDC is not the major reason why people understand the value of mobile banking. From strictly personal experience, I would point out that RDC can be an aha! mobile banking moment. I made certain to get a mobile banking app for my personal use because I’m traveling all the time and there is nothing more convenient than banking via smartphone. When my bank added RDC, though, I felt the mobile banking suite was (at least for the time being) complete. I could do every core banking function necessary via mobile device: checking, funds transfers, pay bills and make deposits. RDC might not have been the major reason why I “understood the value of mobile banking,” but it was the major factor that led me to understand the full value of mobile banking. I think that is — and will continue to be — true for many retail consumers.

That is unless banks get the wild idea that they should charge for it, which they shouldn’t. Ron wrote about the experience banks had trying to charge for debit transactions some months ago, and, boy, that was a shit storm. This would be a similar brouhaha, in my view, but not necessarily for the reasons Ron pointed to. I don’t think it is because consumers “overestimate their willingness to pay.” Rather, consumers are smarter than they look, and they know when something has a tangible cost of near $0, or specifically, $0.04 per check, according to published reports. The sole focus of banks should be on realizing financial gain from RDC through infrastructure efficiency. The ROI and “significant revenue generation” is certainly there through expense reduction — that is, if bankers can tear themselves from their infatuation with ego-laden, massive branch networks that “span the nation.” In other words, a little Snarketing would do them good.