USAA sues Truist over patented mobile check deposit technology

USAA is once again clashing with another bank over the use of remote check deposit technology that USAA says it invented.

On Friday, the San Antonio bank and insurance company for military members sued Truist Financial in an East Texas federal court for allegedly infringing on three of its patents. This marks the third time that USAA, which has $118.3 billion of assets, has gone after a bank it alleges has copied its technology.

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"Truist has profited, and continues to profit, including by providing its infringing mobile deposit service to millions of Truist customers without USAA's permission and without any compensation to USAA, materially harming USAA and its members," the complaint says.

USAA launched its Deposit@Mobile application in 2009. It let customers deposit checks on regular mobile devices by taking a photograph with the device, rather than turning to specialized equipment to capture and deposit a check. The feature was meant to benefit military members in far-flung destinations who could not easily visit a branch. The bank has a largely digital presence. Recently it revamped its app for the first time in 10 years with more sophisticated personalization capabilities and embedded search.

"Truist did not release Truist Mobile Deposit until years after USAA had already implemented and released its patented technology to widespread adoption, demonstrating the commercial viability of USAA's patented technology," reads the complaint.

In April, Truist, which is based in Charlotte, North Carolina, and has $545.1 billion of assets, joined the Open Invention Network, a group that counters so-called patent aggression and encourages the use of shared software licensing and open source software. TD Bank Group and Block, formerly known as Square, are members as well.

USAA has pursued — and won — similar lawsuits against two other banks in the past several years.

In 2018, USAA filed an intellectual property lawsuit against Wells Fargo, alleging the bank infringed on its remote deposit capture patents. Wells Fargo was ordered to pay $200 million to USAA in 2019 and $102.8 million in 2020. In 2020, USAA sued PNC Financial Services Group for the same reason, and won this past May with $218 million in damages. At the time, PNC said that it was planning to appeal the verdict to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

Wells Fargo and PNC are customers of Mitek, a vendor of mobile check deposit software that's used by thousands of other institutions. USAA and Mitek filed intellectual property suits against each other in 2012 and settled them two years later.

USAA and Truist declined to comment.