It turns out offering deposit accounts at Rite Aid stores may make risk management more difficult.

GoBank, the new mobile-first bank account from Green Dot Corporation, has widened its reach lately, expanding its marketing to retail locations such as Rite Aid stores, and will shortly launch a marketing push on television in a partnership with the show Project Runway.

However, GoBank has weathered risk management and fraud prevention issues in recent weeks. First, the company amended its deposit agreement to specify that personal checks deposited remotely (which is how all GoBank checks are deposited, aside from direct deposit) may be held for up to 10 days. Shortly afterward, the bank was lambasted by internet commentators for cancelling accounts, prompting it to release this statement.

While the Rite Aid and Project Runway deals could mean many new customers for GoBank, these customers will be able to sign up for GoBank accounts on their mobile phones in a matter of minutes. The customers are signing up so quickly that GoBank doesn’t know them well. GoBank does not pull credit scores on account applicants, for example, though this is not unusual for DDA accounts across the industry, nor does it pull Chex System reports. It verifies the social security number, email address and phone number of new customers, as well as asks some out-of-wallet questions and checks on the customers with third-party data sources, according to chief risk officer John Morton.

“Our service is brand new; our customers are brand new,” Morton told Bank Innovation.

In other words, since GoBank doesn’t have much transactional data on its new customers — it does have sufficient identification data, the bank says — it has installed its check policy and canceled some accounts. Morton acknowledged the 10-day hold was “conservative,” but noted that most checks in the system are business and government checks, which are generally available within a day.

“We started with conservative policies, and as we get more experienced, we’ll adjust them as we see appropriate,” he said. As for customer data, Morton said, “our customer identification program is more than sufficient,” although he did not offer further details of the program, even though Green Dot, GoBank’s parent, is a publicly traded company.

The bank’s statement regarding the closed accounts read, in part:

When we see unusual activity on an account that looks like attempted fraud, money laundering or other types of financial abuse, we will typically close the account and block the member from getting another GoBank account. As part of this monitoring, we uncovered a small number of accounts that we needed to close.

GoBank’s account origination is mobile-only, meaning customers can get accounts without ever putting down their smartphones, and the process can be a quick one. This is a positive customer experience, but there are costs to convenience.

“GoBank isn’t charging for RDC [remote deposit capture], but they’ll put a 10-day hold on your money,” said Jim Marous, SVP of corporate development at the digital marketing agency New Control.

Doesn’t that amount to the same thing?